Grub

Didn't realize there already was a topic on this one... In this Guardian.co.uk article, there is mention of our lawmakers' recent efforts at resolving this issue. It seems they already THOUGHT they'd banned it, but it turned out they'd merely nixed the salaries for the federal health inspectors -- the result being that things continued on as it had, but the plants just paid for the inspections themselves... D'oh. Brilliant... The thing about an American icon, well I dunno 'bout chickens, but there are cultures that regard cows as more than mere icons -- but they don't pass legislation to stop people from eating 'em... Did you know that Benjamin Franklin opposed the move to make the bald eagle the national bird? He felt they weren't good rolemodels, since they sometimes steal from other birds of prey by harassing them in flight until they drop what they have hunted -- that scavenging thung. Franklin favored the turkey. Good thing he lost out, or else maybe we'd be having bald eagles for Thanksgiving. Phew. The other dude, well what can you say? Did Jane Goodall spend her entire career peering up the wrong tree? (rimshot!)

I think they should all dress like the Village People, and address each others as "Sweetie."

Probably left over from the summer when it got too hot out? Wasn't it Marilyn Monroe who claimed she always kept her uh panties????? in the freezer? ← Aaaah, that drove me crazy for about two minutes, until I remember where it came from -- that's one of her lines from The Seven Year Itch: "When it gets hot like this, you know what I do? I keep my undies in the icebox!

Cumin, roasted and ground. Onions, caramelized and minced (this is particularly good for burgers done beyond medium-well, since it is impossible to dry up this way). Toasted bun, brushed with a garlic and rosemary-infused oil.

Abra, that looks completely mouth-watering -- all of it.

Veal Saltimbocca: My initial idea was to make some fried veal patties from Marcella Hazan's excellent "Marcella Says..." But the only veal I found were these rather expensive veal scallopinis which I thought would be damn shame, to grind up for meat patties -- hence the Saltimbocca idea. But it's been a while since I cooked this, and the patties hadn't been pounded thin -- they were just cut thin. So I left them like that, and this proved a bit of a mistake. They buckled and twisted, without getting any color... Then, after deglazing the pan with white wine, I let the sauce reduce too much, over too high heat, and was left with a charred, burnt sauce. The mashed potatoes came from Marcella's book also -- it is simple enough: mashed taters with parm cheese, parsley and roasted yellow onions. The roasting and chilling process for the onions takes about 3 hours, but I figured it might be worth it, for a special meal -- veal saltimbocca qualifies, in my opinion. But those mashers weren't worht it at all. Finally, after having made some really nice, homemade croutons, I completely overdressed the salad. I used to just droop some salad dressing on top of my salad, on the plate, but discovered that dressing it properly creates a much better result -- plus, it takes far less dressing to properly cover the stuff. Essentially, if you just splash a dollop of dressing on your salad, you tend to use far more, than if you dress it properly. Only I still used too much. Its said about chess, that you only learn from the games you lose (well, there is an opportunity for you to learn) -- man, there's a lot of learning for me to be had from this disaster...

My first cookies... Orange Zest, Cream Cheese and Chocolate Chip Cookies. From this RecipeZaar recipe. If I'd known it was this simple, I would have tried it a long time ago. Orange and chocolate always struck me as a good combination. These cookies are really quite tasty, but fairly rich, though. Didn't actually have chocolate chips -- just morsels, so maybe the cookies look a little larger than they really are. Everything in the thread looks amazing... I think I'd better spend some more time perusing it, heheh.

It's not made from curd. Rather, from whey which has been heated and caramelized, hence it's sweetness. Ekte gjetost is made exclusively from goal milk ← Gjetost always stood out as a very unique cheese to me -- it is extremely sweet, has an odd dark color -- and I knew that the most popular variant in Scandinavia wasn't actually made from goat milk, but from cow- or a combination of cow and goat milk. But can you actually say that this thing isn't really cheese, because of its manufacturing process? Are there any other cheeses out there, made from whey? Heh, "ekte" means real -- you speaking Nonglish?

Bread: (Yeah, it belongs in the "Regrettable" gallery -- it is there...) Sandwich made from an almost equally failed attempt:

Wut's TFL?

Wow! That's fantastic -- how does it work? I mean, does it have a horizontal grill grid like a traditional western grill, or is it like an Indian Tandoor oven?

I grew up with just plain ketchup, but learned to enjoy good fries with salt alone. Then when I got to England, I discovered vinegar -- and I really miss it. They sell vinegar in the supermarkets with the union jack emblazoned upon the bottles but damnit, that's just not the real thing. You drizzle it carefully over your chips, put your face over 'em and gently inhale -- if your nostrils have a seizure, yeah you got the real thing. That's proper vinegar, baby. Nothing like it. The whole mayo thing sounds a little narly, but still kinda interesting, but I'm not sure if plain mayo would be that great -- maybe some remoulade...

Use it in a brown sauce! White sauces are normally the ones infused with cheese (like béchamel + gryere + parm = mornay), and I don't know of any other brown sauces that uses cheese, but this combination is a classic in Norway. It is known as Viltsaus (Wildsauce literally, but essentially Gamesauce) since it is traditionally used with game meats -- but it works really well with any hearty (especially red) meat. Gjetost is great -- screw feta man, this is real goat cheese! It's a great snack, just served on crackers. Norwegians serve it as a topping for a plain, open-faced sandwich -- it is sort of considered a very plain, pedestrian (or even boring) sandwich. A problem that some people have with the cheese, is that it is so rich in flavor that it overwhelms those who cut a chunk off and eat it straight, like you might a cheddar or something like that. It is too soft to easily cut slivers off of it like you might with a parmesan cheese, so you really need to be careful, or invest in a proper, traditional cheese cutter.

I think that by not encouraging people to be knowledgeable, you do them an injustice. And I'm pretty sure that encouraging people to be knowledgeable is easier to achieve through positive and constructive comments, than through scorn and derision... However, I don't consider it nowhere near as bad, to mock someone's ignorance even in the most arrogant and patronizing manner, than it is to excuse ignorance -- let alone to browbeat a knowledgeable person for being an elitist. The human condition tragically involves a complete lack of infallability and omniscience. That means we make mistakes, and also that there are a lot of stuff out there, that we are completely ignorant of. I'm ignorant. Hell, I didn't even know how to make mayo until a few days ago -- and that took me three attempts, even with the help of the Internet. That's pretty dumb. And while it might hurt a little if someone pointed this out (but on the other hand, I think it is important to have a sense of humor about your own mistakes of course), I would only be truly bummed out if someone defended my ignorance and accused mayo-knowledgeable people of elitism and snobbery.

Second that motion -- nothing says egullet than a homebuilt tandoor oven. I'm awestruck. As far as making the seekh kebabs stick to the skewers -- I have the same problem myself, but the only useful advice I have, is to uh, "work" the meat when shaping it onto the skewers. Squeezing the mixture seems to compress it and make it stick better, without making the final result hard or dry. That's the only method I've found that helps -- but I'm just grilling them horizontally, over a regular Weber kettle grill, though. You obviously know what you're doing, so how about sharing your seekh kebab recipe? Fantastic work, man... That's a beaut.

Beer Can Chicken, my man! Rub it itside and out, with whatever you like -- BBQ rub, Tandoori mix, etc. Stick a can (filled with any liquid -- just plain water is fine) up its ass and grill it over indirect, medium heat coals. Slowly roasted, but extremely moist chicken -- perfection.

Norman Bates joined egullet?

You know, this article doesn't really pertain to food -- it pertains to journalism. Notice the headline, Great Moments in Journalism: There's No Way We Could Do Better Than "Ooh la la." The mention of food is pretty incidental. It's a string of little articles about bad journalism. To write about food and not know what foie grass is, is kinda like writing about -- I dunno -- about cars and not knowing what a transmission or a turbo charger is...

BSCB has a more interesting texture, but no more interesting a taste, than tofu. So, as has already been mentioned, it is a good, blank slate for other flavorings -- marinades, rubs, breadings, stuffing... In "Marcella says..." Marcella Hassan prefaces her recipe for Chicken Breasts Saltimbocca Style by saying, "It is a preparation intended to coax from a slice of veal somewhat more flavor than it was naturally endowed with, layering it with pancetta and sage leaves and cooking it in butter and Frascati, the off-dry local white wine. If veal can benefit from that kind of treatment, chicken breasts, that blandest of meats, need it even more."

How come you disapprove of the deep frying part of this recipe? I'm no fan of deep frying, but I really like the crispy texture the chicken gets from it. There is obviously a difference between the food served in homes and that served in restaurants of any given culture -- Indian, Chinese, French and well, any other culture that developed restaurants -- but as far as I understand it, General Tso's Chicken seems to have been a creation of the American Chinese restaurant tradition. Like Chicken Kiev, it might not actually have been invented here, but it could have gotten its name, and generally become a traditional dish in the US. I hope this doesn't sound too negative, dude. The tutorial is -- as jhirshon said, wonderful. Oh yeah, one more thing -- why chicken breasts, as opposed to dark meat? I know this sounds like a bit of a culinary urban legend, but one story I heard about the reason for the popularity of this dish, is that it used the cheaper parts of the chicken (while still tasting great), which prompted restauranteurs to promote the dish as a special, premium dish. This would make a lot of sense, financially speaking... But even if this is incorrect, it would still make sense to use chicken thighs for this dish, since they are a lot cheaper, and far more flavorful than chicken breasts.

I couldn't believe this picture when I first saw it. The sauce was orange in color -- yeah okay, it was orange... And that wasn't really the color I had hoped for when I got the idea to make this sauce -- I sort of envisioned it as a red sauce. So I used a red bell pepper. But I guess the yellow onion got enough color to move the hue from redishy red to ambery orange... But it wasn't FLUORESCENT orange, damnit! The fish looks completely soggy and soaked. Uck. And the parsley in the breading looks burned (it wasn't really burned, but it did have a pretty dark color though -- how can you shallow fry a breaded fish with parsley and not do that to the parsley, while cooking the fish to a golden, crisp coating? Use higher temperatures and shorter cooking time, or vice versa?). Even the asparagus looks limp -- and I tossed the first asparagus I made, which I HAD overcooked. But the sauce, the sauce... Man, I should keep this sauce in mind if I cook something for Halloween or somesuch... Jezz...

From this Wikipedia article, and also according to this one, it basically is the shoulder cut. I don't know what the British term is, but that should help identify it with a proper butcher, or a reasonably knowledgeable supermarket butcher.

Ah, thanks man! Jezz, that article completely overhyped that incident. The "incident" didn't happen anything near what it described. He was actually pretty cool about it. Ramsay put him through several blind taste tests of one celebrity wine and one supposedly very good, expensive wine. Richard actually admitted up front that he couldn't identify the posh wine from the plonk celebrity wine, insisting that he could only say what he liked, and disliked. He got two "right" and one wrong before being faced with what turned out to be two bottles of celebirity wine -- the first one being a hundred pound bottle of Bob Dyland's, and the other being Cliff Richard's very own celebrity plonk -- he panned both of them, saying he'd never buy either. When Ramsay revealed the first bottle and told him what the price was, Ricard was amazed and said at least his own celebrity plonk only cost eight pounds -- and then, when Ramsay revealed that the second bottle was his own stuff, he laughed his ass off. He was a good sport about it, and even admitted that his own wine did taste pretty harsh. Then, after Ramsay had bugged him about half a dozen times, to say "fuck," he finally leaned in close and said, "Okay you can tell me to fuck off now," and Ricdard replied, "Okay, fuck off," while still laughing at his own gaffe. If Richard had said it in anger -- like what the hype described it as -- it would have been a story; you know, hypocracy.

Question: Which F Word series, and episode was it that featured Cliff Richard? I thought I'd seen all nine episodes of both series, but have yet to come across this juicy bit.

I've never seen this in food, but I've definitely seen this stuff at sea, rowing around in an old dinghy at night -- it's quite a beautiful sight, if somewhat eerie...