Toby
-
Posts
777 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Store
Help Articles
Posts posted by Toby
-
-
Do you have any plans for a cookbook? (Please say yes.)
-
Nina, thanks for the recipe. I love oxtails in Jamaican restaurants. Have you ever heard of the use of that caramelized brown sugar syrup being used in their oxtail stews? (I ask because I use a little for brown stew chicken and it gives it that same dark color.) Also, if you can get hold of some West Indian seasoning peppers (they have flavor of scotch bonnets with very little heat), a little will add more to the dark flavor.
-
Speaking of big onions, one of my favorite chicken recipes is a Louisiana-Cajun dish called "Chicken a la Gros Oignon." First you make smothered chicken, and when the chicken pieces are tender, you push them to one side of the pan, let drippings cook down, and then stir-fry a thinly sliced great big Spanish onion cut in thin wedges, until it's starting to brown, stir well to mix chicken pieces with onions and let cook together for a few minutes. It's really satisfying. You can add andouille sausage to it or you can make it with a cut-up rabbit instead of the chicken.
We had some big beautiful walla walla onions at the market today.
-
Elizabeth David in Harvest of the Cold Months, the Social History of Ice and Ices, traces the transmission of ice and ices (and I think has some general history of food transmission, including the 19th century origins of the de Medici story -- remember seeing it but can't find it now). I'm too tired to look at it tonight (just got back from our first day at the market -- 13 hours on my feet, but it was great), so will look at it tomorrow and post if there's anything interesting.
-
Duck noodle soup with wontons at New Chao Chou on Mott near Hester.
-
There's another Chinese-Vietnam restaurant down on 3rd Avenue around 25th or 26th Street -- it changes name every 6 months or so and has never been good.
There may actually, though, be some logic behind this combination (although I don't know if it's true in these instances). A lot of the boat people who left Vietnam in the late 70s and 80s were actually ethnic Chinese who'd lived in Vietnam for many generations.
-
I've always thought I knew what was meant by the word palate, but when I began thinking about it, I wasn't so sure. Threads about foods we dislike even though they're usually considered to be good or even delicacies, made me wonder how anyone could know anyone else's palate, or even understand or rate their own. Malawry mentioned exercises done in her school in which students tasted spices while holding their noses closed; she also mentioned the debated concept of umami.
The dictionary defines "palate" as 1. the roof of the mouth, consisting of an anterior bony portion (hard palate) and a posterior muscular portion (soft palate) that separate the oral cavity from the nasal cavity. 2. the sense of taste. 3. intellectual or aesthetic taste; mental appreciation.
Although my question is directed to meanings 2 and 3, it would follow that both 2 and 3 are the result of what happens in 1, the anatomical palate which would then also be connected to sense of smell. Can people who smoke or have sinus problems have a good palate? Older people supposedly lose their sense of taste; why? What role does chewing play? And what about the taste buds on the tongue? What's the connection between a violent allergic reaction to a food and subsequent dislike of that taste in terms of changing palates?
MFK Fisher, in her introduction to Japanese Cooking by Shizuo Tsuji, writes that "students of the influence of gastronomy ... believe that what and how a man eats in his first few years will shape his natural appetite for the rest of his life. It will not matter if he begins as a potter's son and ends as an affluent banker. If he ate pure fresh food when he was a child, he will seek it out when he is old and weary."
She then questions whether it's true that the palate is shaped irrevocably when we're children: "Not only does my palate refresh itself daily with foods almost as simple as the first ones I knew, but I feel it has stayed young because of my natural curiousity about the best dishes that other countries have offered me."
Can a palate be educated? If so, how do we know what we're educating it with? Can you trust someone else's palate? Is the ability to break down a cooked dish and identify all the various ingredients the mark of an educated palate? I knew someone who could tell all the ingredients but couldn't tell the qualitative difference between a packaged hummus mix filled with preservatives and a made-from-scratch hummus. What about taste memory, the ability to remember the taste of something eaten previously, even many years before? Is that part of the palate?
-
Grilled quail (marinated in olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, rosemary), tabbouleh. It was still very hot here, not much rain yet.
-
Dim Sum Go Go - 5 East Broadway.
Duck dumplings, bean curd skin with pork and vegetables, and chicken and sticky rice in lotus leaf are delicious.
-
Rochelle, my apologies for not posting sooner to tell you how avidly I look forward to your reports. While I selfishly wish you could write new posts every day, I'm so grateful that you're finding the time to write such detailed and honest reports.
-
Bella, I'm not sure; the name sounds familiar -- I spend a lot of time hanging out at the wine store across the street from my house. Tell me about them.
-
Bella, does Amador Foothill Vineyards do a zinfandel with sheep on the label? I used to drink that but have never seen it in New York.
I was in the Bay Area for a few months 2 winters ago and we went up to Napa several times -- it was way too crowded; and that was during the rainy season.
-
Yes, Suvir, please. I just bought some quail in Chinatown today. What would go into the nihari masala?
-
Yes, I've been reading it. A lot of information about parts of the Mediterranean that haven't been covered much. Some of the receipes have interesting slants on familiar foods; others are completely new to me. (Strand bookstore had a few copies in the basement half price.)
-
Bella, thanks. I lived in Berks Co., PA for 2 summers recently. The state stores are ridiculous. Occasionally you can find ok wine, but there's no logic behind it. We found and drank a lot of Hahn's cabernet franc one summer -- it was ok.
Having grown up in NY, lived in San Francisco for 18 years, and now back here for 5, I think there's a disconnect in most New Yorkers understanding of food in California. It changed the way I cook completely, but it took me a while to understand. It's like visitors think the weather is fog. I think you need to live in any place for some time to understand. To me, drinking California wine in NY transports me back.
There are some Californians in egullet. I wish you all would post more about food and wine so I could enjoy it vicariously.
-
No, never tried it. It's very hit or miss about finding California wines here. Oh, have you ever tried Peachy Canyon Zinfandel Port? It's so good, but I can't find it to buy here -- I drank it in a restaurant.
What Joyce Goldstein recipe are you cooking? (There's a dinner thread you can post on, too.)
-
Oliva, I just got a new cookbook called Mediterranean Street Food by Anissa Helou that has a recipe for the long-cooked lamb (mechoui) I'd posted about. In the notes she mentions an Anatolian version where the lamb is cut up into large roasts and baked all night in a slow-burning wood-fired oven. The lamb is served with pide bread and ayran (sheep or goat milk yogurt combined with equal amount chilled water and salt to taste in a blender and blended until frothy).
-
Not pedestrian at all. Peachy Canyon Zinfandel. Blockheadia Ringnosi Zinfandel (also their Sauvignon Blanc). Ridge is doing these different blends of Zin that I like a lot. I love Bonny Doon. When I lived in San Francisco we used to go down there a lot. Found some of their Syrah in a wine store in NY last year that I liked a lot; also their Pinot and their Roussane. Joseph Phelps -- I can get an inexpensive grenache that I like in the summertime and I just found a bottle of the Syrah. California wine is so good with California food; drinking it here in NY reminds me of meals I cooked in San Francisco. I also like Australian shiraz -- Mad Fish, Czimcy (sp?), Australian dessert wines.
-
What is haldi?
-
I know almost nothing about kheemas. I used to cook a simple keema, much like the recipe you've given (for which, thank you) when I was a poor student. It's very satisfying food and stretches a long way. I just ate the one I cooked the other day with some sauteed spinach and I made patna rice that I served with some very thinly sliced onions that I'd really browned in a little oil before I cooked the rice.
I've always made keema with lamb, but if I'd made my recipe with ground chicken, would I have had to make the spice mix lighter flavored? I don't mean less spices, but the ones I used had a sort of dark fragrance to them that went with the lamb. Oh, I left it out of my first post -- I also used seeds from black cardamom in the garam masala. Maybe that and the cinnamon gave it what I'm calling a dark flavor, which I think would have been too heavy for chicken.
Is there a thread on different garam masalas? I'm interested in getting the proportions rights, and how different mixes and proportions will go with different foods.
Also, what kind of red chile powder do you use? I used some dried whole very tiny red Thai peppers and ground them up; usually I use ground African bird pepper that's very hot.
-
On the lime thread, Suvir mentioned Bora Kheema, a Moslem-style ground lamb dish. It sounded very intriguing and I had some ground lamb, but Suvir wasn't logged on to ask for more directions, and I couldn't find a recipe. He had mentioned that it was cooked simply with cinnamon, cumin seed, coriander seed and red chile powder and finished with fresh lime juice. Left to my own devices, here's what I did -- First, I pan roasted the above spices plus something called penja pepper (pearl of cameroon) -- a white peppercorn, black cardamom seeds and some dried small red chiles and then ground them up. I chopped up some onion and sauteed it in a little oil until it was browning. Then I added some chopped up skinny (but bigger than Thai and not serrano) green chile peppers, garlic and ginger and sauteed that for a few minutes. I then stirred in the ground lamb, broke it up, and stirred it until it was just starting to brown, added some salt and 1/2 cup water and some of the ground up spices until it smelled right. Turned heat to very low, covered the pan, and cooked for a little over an hour until the meat was fairly dry. Turned off heat and squeezed in some lime juice. Ate with rice and some spinach. It was very enjoyable -- pretty hot from the fresh and dried peppers, but the cinnamon, cumin, peppercorns and coriander (I'd just bought some very fragrant Moroccan coriander seeds) seemed to balance the pepper heat with a darker, very aromatic taste.
I'd appreciate it, Suvir or anyone else, if you'd post the authentic recipe so I could try that the next time, as well as other recipes for kheema. I find kheema truly addictive, I just want to go on eating it.
Another question (this may have been addressed on another thread) is how long
will dried spices stay fresh? What's the best way to store them? I buy the smallest packaged quantities possible (don't have a good source for bulk spices), but my kitchen is very hot and airless, and I always find I'm throwing spices out because they lose their fragrance.
-
No footnotes, although there is a bibliography of books in Italian. She says, "The important questions are: When did Italy's stews become ragu? Did the name come from France? And when did Italian ragu first sauce pasta?" Essentially she seems to propose that while Renaissance Italian meat stews (chunky meat stews, sometimes with nuts and fruit, cooked in a strong broth and sweet or tart wine, with Middle Eastern seasonings) and French ragouts may have been influenced by each other, applying the name "ragu" to Italian stews with sauces came about because all things French had become popular in Italy in the late 1700s. She doesn't say what Italian stews were called before being called ragus.
Her argument is slightly garbled, and is in contrast to the Academy's belief that Ragu Bolognese began as a "humble dish in Bologna's farm kitchens a century ago" using tough meat, salt pork and vegetables. The cream was actually a by-product -- fresh milk was preserved by long heating, in which the cream separated and coagulated on the milk's surface. The cream was then skimmed. It was used in ragu to enrich the sauce and eliminate the need for broth which was a meat product and costly. "Using cream created a sauce so rich and filling that only a little was needed for saucing enough tagliatelle to feed a large family."
-
Lynne Rossetto Kasper has a long section on Ragu Bolognese in The Splendid Table, Recipes from Emilia-Romagna. Bologna's chapter of L'Accademia Italiana della Cucina chose one recipe as being the most typical example of Ragu Bolognese which of course led to a big argument in Bologna. The Academy believed that ragu bolognese began as a country dish. Kasper, instead, believes that ragu bolognese was developed in palaces, not on farms, and evolved from stews mentioned in Renaissance cookbooks and on into the 18th century. She states that Italy's stews were similar to French ragouts of the period and that it became fashionable to call these stews ragus after the French ragouts. Using less meat and serving the ragu over pasta (to stretch the number of people the dish would feed) became popular among the less affluent during the late 1800s.
To support her theory (which is a lot more detailed in the book), she gives recipes for The Cardinal's Ragu from the late 18th century (some fat, minced onion, diced skirt steak, cinnamon, salt, pepper, stock and a little flour); Baroque Ragu (pancetta, sausage, diced chicken thighs, giblets or ground pork, chopped chuck, stock, tomato paste, heavy cream and wine); and then the Classic Ragu Bolognese selected by the Academy: diced pork fatback is sauteed until its fat is almost all rendered, diced celery, carrot and onion are added and sauted, coarsely ground skirt steak or chuck is stirred in and browned and then white wine and a little tomato paste diluted in stock is added. The sauce is cooked very slowly for 2 hours, with tablespoons of milk being stirred in from time to time. Just at the end, reduced heavy cream is added.
She then gives a modern version, using olive oil and a small amount of pancetta in place of the fatback and eliminating the heavy cream; as well as recipes for Country-Style Ragu (red wine, milk, stock and a few plum tomatoes plus meat...) and Game Ragu (this one sounds delicious -- small cubes of venison, hare, wild board, wild rabbit or elk, cooked with onion, carrot, rosemary and sage in a little tomato paste, wine vinegar, red wine and stock, with ground cloves and cinnamon).
I've just looked at Hazen's recipe, and it looks tastier than Kasper's 2 ragu bolognese recipes; as you said, Hazen cooks the meat in the milk before adding the wine and uses some canned plum tomatoes instead of the tomato paste.
-
Oliva, your post reminded me of a Moroccan oven-roasted lamb I used to make called m'choui. The recipe called for a forequarter or saddle of lamb, but I always used a leg. You can pit-roast it or roast it in the oven (which is how I cooked it). You trim lamb, make shallow incisions, and then blend quite a lot of softened butter with about 4 cloves of finely chopped garlic, salt, powdered cumin, sweet paprika and cayenne. Rub this into the meat and let sit overnight. Then roast in 450 oven for 15-20 minutes, lower heat to 350 and roast, basting with the juices every 15 minutes, until lamb comes easily away from the bone with your fingers, about 2-1/2 to 3 hrs. I served it garnished with mint and cilantro, and with little bowls of sea salt, ground cumin and very hot cayenne to dip the lamb in. I like roast lamb rare and thought this would be really dry and overdone, but I liked the idea of dipping the meat into the cumin, salt and cayenne, so I tried it and it was delicious.
ox tails: Tips & Techniques
in Cooking
Posted
What I meant was a specific Jamaican technique used in stews where brown sugar is browned really dark in oil, and then the chicken/meat pieces are browned in the sugar-oil. The Jamaican oxtail stew I've eaten in Jamaican restaurants comes out really, really dark, and I think the sugar adds to the flavor and stickiness. There's a jarred product you can buy of the brown sugar-oil stuff; it's a little scary looking, though.