Tri2Cook

Are commercial, industrial products always necessarily inferior? MelissaH I'm going to stick my neck in the noose and say that a well-made commercial product is preferable to a half-assed attempt at homemade. I know we've all had a time when we were trying to choke down something horrible with a smile on our face while the person who served it proudly proclaimed "I made it myself!". Bonus points for the effort but, in the end, it's the taste that matters.

I think that's exactly what it's supposed to be. Nobody wants to be the person sitting there eating the last bit while everybody else watches, wishing they had taken it. The comedian Jerry Clower told a story of how they were taught as children that it was never, ever ok to take the last piece of chicken or biscuit from the plate. One night he was at his uncle's house for dinner and everybody was sitting around the table looking longingly at the last piece of chicken when a gust of wind blew out the lamp. His uncle screamed in pain and when his aunt got the lamp lit there were 5 forks sticking in the back of his uncle's hand. I've always thought that pretty much sums up the situation. Everybody wants to take it but doesn't want the spotlight on them when they do. Personally, I'm with you. If you want it, take it. If someone else wanted it... you snooze, you lose.

I never have trouble sleeping. It's usually difficult for me to get more than a couple pages of whatever I'm reading finished before the book hits me in the face. However, number two from the list, oatmeal with sliced banana, is my breakfast almost every morning. Maybe the effect is time released?

Yeah, Ultratex is good stuff. I use Ultratex 3 and 8 as well as Ultrasperse 3 and 8 depending on what I'm using it for. I'm not sure if it's considered raw. Is there cooking involved in turning cassava root into tapioca starch and is it then entirely enzyme or chemical modified or is cooking involved in that process? I think if I ever have to do raw vegan they'll be getting a fruit and vegetable tray. That should prevent any repeat requests.

I don't like classifying peoples food as pretentious. It seems like it's the cool thing to backlash against modern creative cuisine by calling everything that doesn't resemble something knocked together after work and dumped on a plate pretentious. It's just another way of approaching food that introduces ingredients, techniques and flavor combinations in new or different ways to achieve the same goal that has always existed... good food. I wonder if the person who decided to dump a bottle of wine in the beef stew and call it bourguignon was considered pretentious or creative? If the brothers maintain the level of quality they've displayed up to this point and are eliminated based strictly on the techniques they use to achieve the result, that will be the end of the show for me. But that's not going to happen. If the food is good, Colicchio will say it's good regardless of whether he's a fan of the technique or not.

I'm not really familiar with the boundaries of raw cuisine. For example, would agar be prohibited for setting gels since it has to be heated to hydrate? The item to be gelled doesn't have to be cooked, you can have it a warm room temp, hydrate the agar in a little water and combine the two but then the agar has been heated to a pretty significant temp. I've never been asked to cater raw vegan... I almost hope I never am.

To be completely fair, there was also seared scallop, a mushroom sauce and a celery root puree on the plate. While it doesn't make the "simple scallops" themselves any more challenging, it is a much better effort when viewed as an entire plate. One ingredient contrasting two textures and temperatures.

Another episode that I enjoyed. Deconstruction is fun and can be good if done well. I thought Bryan's quickfire dessert duo was pretty cool. The guest judge wasn't impressed. I didn't get to taste it so I can't disagree but I read the recipe and it sounded tasty to me. Maybe I'll try it sometime. Glad to see last weeks preview for this episode was indeed the drama edit, Jennifer's too good to go home over deconstructed lasagna.

I have to admit that the amount of sugar did more than give me pause, I'm used to cornbread with little to no sugar involved. My first thought was "that's going to be a cake". But I have learned that it's rarely smart to doubt eGulleters without trying what they suggest first... especially if it's straight from the eGullet Grand Poobah. So I'm definitely going to give it a try.

Never heard of it. Is it just red velvet with blue coloring instead of red? If it is, then no, I won't be adding it.

That was popular where I lived when I was younger too... but with buttermilk.

So the blueberries are winding down, if I counted correctly I got just over 60 gallons as of today (no, I didn't keep them all for myself ). A mushroom hunter friend said the chanterelles are out now (running a little later than usual this year) but I haven't seen any. I stumbled upon a HUGE patch of wild horseradish recently but haven't done anything with it yet... but I'll be going back to get into that. Matsutakes should be starting before too long but everything else was late this year so we'll see. I'm waiting for frost to go back out to the area where I pick blueberries, it's full of wild roses so I'm going to forage up some rose hips as well. Foraging is fun.

Apparently I don't have a picture of this (if I do, I can't find it) so I guess I'll post it without and hopefully find one somewhere. Three years ago I was asked to do a dinner for the local chapter of a charity group. The guest of honor was a lover of all things bbq. The problem was that it was scheduled for late November which around here means very cold with lots of snow and ice. So I developed a multi-course dinner based around the flavors of bbq that incorporated the flavors of the season and could be done entirely indoors. This was one of the dishes. It went over so well that I continued to refine it and have used it many times since... usually by request. This is the current version. It's nothing groundbreaking but it's something that people seem to know about locally, even if they haven't eaten it. I did a blueberry based (blueberry bbq sauce, blueberry compote) version of this for a "taste of the town" thing during the local blueberry festival last year as well. pulled pork hock: Sear a slab of pork belly in a large pan and remove. Brown fresh pork hocks in the pan and remove. Add diced onion, celery and carrot and caramelize. Add chopped garlic and cook until the pungency reduces. Add vinegar, dry mustard, salt, pepper and cayenne pepper. Place pork belly, a smoked pork hock and the seared hocks on the veggies and add water. Heat to a simmer and braise covered until the hocks are tender in a 300 F oven. Remove the hocks and bacon from the pan, reserve the bacon. Sieve the liquid and reserve. Extract the meat from the hocks, shred, and mix in some of the bbq sauce. At serving time heat the pulled pork, moisten with the braising liquid as needed. bbq pork belly: Remove the skin (reserve) from the braised pork belly and cut the belly into bite size cubes. At serving time, sear the surface where the skin was removed in a very hot pan and brush the cubes with bbq sauce. pumpkin bbq sauce: Cook diced onions in butter until caramelized. Add minced garlic and cook to soften. Add pumpkin puree, cider vinegar, worcestershire sauce, yellow mustard, ketchup, chipotle in adobo (pureed), nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, ginger and brown sugar. Cook for about 20 minutes on very low heat stirring frequently until thick, add bourbon, blitz in a blender and pass through a chinois. Adjust flavors to taste and season with smoked salt. cranberry compote: Caramelize pearl onions in a little oil and remove from pan. Pour off any excess oil and add cranberry juice and fresh cranberries. Cook until the cranberries soften, stirring occasionally. Add sugar to taste, minced jalapeno and the onions. Cook to thicken a bit and season with salt and pepper. corn pudding: Cook corn kernels in butter until caramelized, add cream, puree and sieve. Cook cornmeal in milk. Cool completely. Combine the cormeal in a mixer bowl with egg, melted butter and salt. Bake cormeal mixture 30 min. at 350 F. Puree pudding and corn/cream mixture in a blender with enough additional cream (if needed) to get a thick puree, season with salt. cracklins: Cut the reserved pork belly skin into squares roughly the same size as the pork belly cubes. Flash in hot oil and season with salt. Since this is part of a multi-course menu, I keep it small. I plate it with a couple cubes of the belly, a couple bites of the hock, some of the bbq sauce, a couple small spoons of the compote and a few small dollops of the pudding. I top the belly cubes with the cracklins and give the pulled hock a spray of North Carolina style vinegar sauce.

Cool stuff Stu. I've never tried doing the monochromatic thing. I can definitely see where it would be challenging but it looks like you pulled it off. I wouldn't sweat the small stuff that bothered you too much, a 7 or 8 course dinner party is a pretty big undertaking. If the food was good and you and your guests had fun then nothing was missing.

There's been way too much humbleness and "oh garsh, I can't..." in this thread! This is a thread about throwing down something we do great and saying "yeah, that's mine". Fat Guy provided us with the perfect opportunity to brag without being conceited. We're not starting a thread about what we do great, we're contributing to his thread in response to the question he asked. All this toe-in-the-sand "gee, I don't do anything great" stuff is going to make it really difficult for anyone to actually post what Fat Guy asked for without appearing arrogant in comparison. Come on everybody, let's have fun with this! I'm going to post what I think is mine. I'd add it now but I don't have any pictures and the forum edit time limit prevents adding them in later. Maybe it's not great in the overall scheme of things but it's sure popular with the people who've had it.

Let's see... Love To Eat - Yes. Adventurous Appetite - Yes. Unapologetic Craving For Food - Maybe, but fortunately not 24/7... I'd be huge. Food Knowledge - I think so. I won't be teaching Harold McGee anything but I do alright. Hosting Experience - Do dinner parties count? Oh, tv hosting? Nope. Background in: Cooking - Yes. Food Service - Yes. Critique - Not professionally. Education - Nope. Food Lifestyle - WTF does that mean? A background in food lifestyle? I eat every day, does that count? Male - Yep. 25 to 45 - Yep. Witty - If smartass counts as witty, I'm in. Charismatic - Yep. The ladies all swoon when I walk in the room. What? They weren't swooning? They fell over laughing hysterically? Never mind. Totally Unreserved - I don't know, I have reservations about that one. I'm petty outgoing most of the time but I don't know if I'm, like, totally unreserved. HUGE Personality - I'm bigger than Jesus! (that's pronounced "hay-soos", the Mexican guy up the street, he's not as tall as I am) Well, since they didn't specify that it had to be any particular type of personality, I guess that's another yes. ...I have a feeling I'm not what they're looking for. I guess it's a good thing I wasn't planning to try.

I sure hope that happens for me someday! Until then, I would say there is no "reputation maker" in my repertoire. With the disclaimer that I really don't know what Fat Guy has in mind, I'm guessing that he isn't expecting this to be relative to the culinary world at large. I'm guessing he wants to know something we do that has that wow factor for the people we cook for. The thing that they really hope we're cooking when they come for dinner or we're bringing food to an event. The thing that somebody asks about when they see you at the store because someone told them how awesome it was. Maybe I toast an eggo better than anybody else in my town(ok, I'm getting ridiculous with that). I don't think he requires that it be a dish Grant Achatz or Thomas Keller is begging us to give up the recipe for or anything like that.

There's nothing among all of the dishes you've done that stands out? Nothing that you've honed over time to your vision of it's perfection? Really? I think there is a definite division between "everything is always excellent" and "he/she did this (whatever) that was just beyond incredible, I'll never forget it". Even the greatest of the great chefs have dishes that people talk about above and beyond their normal greatness. Sometimes knowledge, instinct and maybe even a little luck all pool their resources on a day when the culinary gods are smiling on your kitchen and you create that thing that sets itself apart from the rest of what you do... no matter how good the rest is. If you don't know which ones they are, talk to the people you cook for. I bet they can tell you what the best thing you do is.

I'm really looking forward to this one.

Hopefully working on that book he hinted at a year and a half or so ago... but I'm not betting on it.

If there were no fridges or ice supplies and the chefs knew (or even had a good idea) what they were getting into as far as cold storage, then all sympathy goes out the window. If I'm going to an outdoor setting in very hot temps 24 hours ahead of the event with nothing but a small cooler and a little ice that can't be replenished, fish and seafood are not going with me. Then again, not everybody had problems with their fish. Maybe they were just more diligent?

The fats wouldn't have to be hot to be liquid, they'd just have to be not cold. Even when most fats start to get that opaque look at cooler room temp, they're still somewhat fluid. A very slight bit above that and they're liquid. I'm curious about the fridge question as well. Even if it doesn't solidify in the fridge, I'm wondering if it gets a thick, greasy mouthfeel. I plan to try this so I'll stick some in the fridge and find out. Worst case, you could probably scoop some into a small bowl and whisk it in a just slightly warm water bath to loosen it up as needed.

If that's the case, they pushed the issue of the challenge too far. Since, as far as we know from what was televised, the chefs had no knowledge of the conditions they would be dealing with for the challenge, they had no opportunity to plan their dishes around the setting. Sacrificing food quality and/or safety doesn't seem like an intelligent route for a show about cooking to take. They could have said "oh, by the way chefs, refrigeration will be limited to your portable coolers and the ice they contain so take that into consideration" without giving away too much.

Actually, yes. It was an unusually cool summer. Never used the A/C the entire summer, not once.

The owners of the restaurant where I worked approached me back in late winter to inform me that they had an offer they couldn't refuse on the business. They wanted me to leave the business with them and continue the catering business we started together. After giving it some thought, I agreed. It was a good move, the catering business has done well and I would not have had the time that I needed to invest in it if I'd continued working at the restaurant. Now that the business is stabilized and running smoothly, I'm kinda missing the restaurant kitchen. So, after some discussion with my co-owners and some key members of staff, I decided on a whim to apply for a position at a soon-to-open local restaurant. I was hired and will be filling the role of pastry chef. Pastry and dessert is my favorite area of work in the kitchen but this will be my first job where it's my entire focus and responsibility so I'm a bit nervous despite being confident. It's a newly-opening place with no reputation to ride on so it will be entirely on my head if the market hates our desserts. The good side is that the position allows considerable freedom to continue most of my duties with the catering business... as long as sleep isn't actually a necessary thing. Anyway, no real point to this. Just excited.