Jinmyo

browniebaker, I don't want to argue or to hurt your feelings in any way. But refraining from eating actual food in order to save "room" to ingest nutritionally pointless calories... That just shocks me. I despise desserts. Except perhaps for a few slices of fruit (although I myself wouldn't eat them) or a sugarless sorbet to cleanse the palate. If people have less time to prepare and eat meals, that they seem to be concentrating on actual food instead of desserts seems to me a good thing.

Alex, perhaps the polenta is just too thick? Recently I've had one of those brilliant ideas/recognizing the obvious about frying polenta. I put some EVOO into the bottom of non-stick skillets and pour the polenta into them. When they cool they seperate from the sides. Then I store the polenta. When it's time, I just put the skillets on the burners. Flip out onto cutting boards and either slide back in or just serve as is, sliced into wedges. Sometimes the skillets will have some grated cheese and herbs or some roasted tomato or panchetta or whatever. Easy, simple, a great magic truc.

Anna, it's so very true. I also use huge mixing bowls to season and oil things like roasted potatoes before pouring them out onto the roasting pans. And sometimes for seasoning and marinating meats. I wonder what people think they "trying to get away with" by making things so difficult for themselves. The idea of a few extra strokes of a washcloth. When one approaches something in a miserly and narrow manner, wanting to expend oneself as little as is possible, the results are always trouble.

Asafoetida stinks. It was traditionally considered to be a cure for flatulence because it smells like flatulence. One name for it is Devil’s Dung.

Yup.

I don't eat until I've been up for many hours. (I get up around 3:30.) And then it's often gnawing from a few ribs cut from thick rib steaks. Or some congee with dried shrimp and chile. Or an omelet rolled in a tortilla with some scallions and chipotle. Or rice and miso shiru. Or hiyayako tofu with bonito. I do like to have kippers, toast, and eggs but tend to do that as a lunch for the past years. Breakfast cereals and such do not interest me in the least and I find I consider them to be in the same category of semi-foods (theoretically edible but pointless to me) as chocolate bars and fruit muffins and such. fifi, the blackened tomato is a joy. A joy.

Puff Guy.

Nothing like a good plate of bangers and mash.

Ack. Please, please, chicken livers must be rare.

S'okay, tommy. I've done breasts like that. Boned them, skin to the skillet, about five minutes, flip, bung in 400 oven for fifteen minutes. Better if you throw the bones back on top though and remove before plating.

What do you mean? What are they?

I actually loved this kind of breakfast when I was in France as a child. Cafe au lait in a big bowl, torn bits of baguette slathered with Norman butter, the butter mixing with the milky coffee...

Gadgets maim the mind and keep the hands more busy with cleanup than wiping a knife and cleaning a board ever can. Ron P can go play with his pocket fisherman.

Another great thing: Cream of onion soup with hamhocks. Take several different kinds of onions, saute, splash some wine and reduce. Simmer with chicken stock and hocks. Remove and dismantle hocks. Puree onions and stock. Add cream, incorprate, add hock meat. Serve with deep-fried pease porridge croquettes (mushy peas bound in cheese-cloth, cooked until firm) and a daikon and radish green salad with radicchio and escarole. This was a very popular menu. (Finishing with a cheese tasting course with oat-cake tuiles and beginning with something else I can't quite remember.) Very English in a twisted sort of way.

Kristin, salt them afterwards with fleur de sel or grise, good bit of crushed pepper. Multiple uses: Still warm with cheddar or Stilton in a sandwich (with Dijon). Minced and touched with horseradish and rolled within a slice of cold prime rib. Minced as a garnish for mashers or celery root or parsnip puree. With bacon and calf liver and toast. Pureed and loosened with stock and herbs as a sauce for lamb or even a firm fish like shark. Pierce a piece of puffed tofu and stuff it with chunks of the onion. Serve as is with a thick slice of ham. Very versatile and easy.

I try to keep some on hand in the freezer for people to add to quick noodle dishes or such. I'm not disgusted if there is a slice or two in something someone else made that I am eating. But I'd never serve it. Basically, it's fish spam.

Quite agree, quite agree. Take some red onions, top and tail but leave the skin on. Douse in cheap "balsamic" vinegar. Roast at 300 for two hours.

Soba, some crackling thrown in would be sublime.

Beyond and around personal preferences are what is most appropriate to bring out the best flavours and textures of various foods. Some vegetables should be al dente crisp. Others become sublime when almost melted. Some meats should be rare, others well done but still moist and tender. Some need to be well-done in order for collagen and so on to render the meat tender and toothsome. Some become rubbery and tough when even brought to medium rare. So: Depends.

One can make fairly decent patties from a mixture of cooked beans and grains smooshed together. But they really does need egg for binding. And taste nothing like a burger at all. There simply is no vegetarian analogue for a hamburger. Or bacon. Or ham. Or poultry. Or... And there does not need to be. It is possible to have a diverse, exciting, and delicious range of foods within the various shadings of "vegetarian" cuisines. Better to explore the vegetarian dishes of world cuisine and go forward rather than look back to one's childhood and try to make a vegetarian bologna sandwich or hot dog or whatever.

Seasonality is meaningless in most of Canada for most of the year.

kel, I understand entirely. But the way that omnivores think, fish is not "meat". In fact, chicken, grouse, duck, goose and so on are not meat either; they are poultry. Meat is beef, lamb, pork, veal, bison etc. Fish is just fish. So if someone says that they don't eat "meat"...

What? Red ones? /kidding Good thoughts, Steve. I think one of the most important things is to look at the workflow (from fridge to sink to work-area to stove to plating) and see if where things are positioned make sense or not. A friend has a huge house with a galley kitchen that acts as a corridor from the living room to washroom and bedrooms. She has to scuttle back and forth from end to end and shrink back to make room when family members pass through. Seldom are home kitchens designed for what one actually does in them.

Soba, eryingi are a kind of oyster mushroom that grow in a clump but look like white porcini. The taste is quite mild though, like oyster mushrooms. Gojuchang (or "kojuchang") is Korean red miso with chiles. I get the chive kimchi from Kimchi Farm Canada, a supplier outside of Toronto. Great, herbaceous stuff.

Katie, that's lovely.