mcohen
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Posts posted by mcohen
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I think your point is well taken and valid. San Diego is not NYC, Chicago, San Franscisco or even Los Angeles. Nor should it be, it has it's own identity and that's evolving. San Diego is a nice little military town with strong midwestern roots, that is no longer so small and has grown and changed faster than it can quite adapt. What it lacks is worldly sophistication it more than makes up for in other quality of life factors.
No, the U/T is not a world class paper and there is no question their weekly food section is on of the worst imaginable. Completely useless.
Come back for a visit. I think you'll find the food truly is getting better here. San Diego isn't particularly a fine dining destination, and maybe it never will be, but it is getting easier to get a pretty good meal here.
For such a large, metropolitan city, SD never matured beyond its small town mindset. And, yes, that's part of its charms. But, other times, it devolves into this small-minded inferiority complex exhibited in this article. I don't think SD ever recovered from LA building its own harbor in Long Beach. Like I said earlier, I wouldn't have taken issue with the article if it had pointed out that the fine dining food in SD has gotten better over the years and that the national media has not yet recognized that. But, this article went beyond that went it tried to argue that the food in SD was actually better than LA with its convuluted reasoning. I just found the writer to be grasping at straws, in her attempt to show that SD had a better food scene than LA.
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so, i have a rice cooker which i use to cook brown rice. and, one of the things the instuction booklet recommended was to presoak the rice before you begin cooking the rice. does this mean that the longer you soak the rice, the better? is there ever a point where soaking the rice too long would be detrimental?
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has anybody else read this book yet?
at first, i was rather disappointed with the book. with the title, 'how to pick a peach', i thought the book would be about, you know, how to select and pick out the best possible fruits and vegetables when you go shopping. and, in that regards, i found the book to be frustratingly basic, not going deep enough into what the consumer should look for. for example, with an artichoke, all we were told is that the leaves should squeek. but, i thought this was a missed oppurtunity by not including other pointers and tips about how to select an artichoke- want bigger stem because this means the heart will be larger, etc..
instead, the book is more about the evolution of the food industry and why food is no longer as tasty and juicy as the ones we once savored. this is where the book shines, and i found that information interesting enough even though i never really had any particular interest into that subject.
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i would have to liked to see some pictures of white's dishes in the book since i've heard so much about his plating. in fact, just looking for pics of his dishes on the internet, hasn't borne much success.
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I haven't had a chance to put together my review of Thee Bungalow yet, but I wanted to post an article from San Diego Magazine that I had read this week and found pretty accurate. The article is mostly addressed to the people who don't take the restaurant scene in San Diego seriously. I know that there are a few comments to that effect floating around on egullet or elsewhere, and that always bugs me a little (ok - a lot! it's probably what motivated me to join egullet in the first place). So I thought that this article was pretty much right on target. I am very familiar with the restaurants discussed in the review, and concur on the conclusion - yes, San Diego restaurants need more recognition overall! Compared to LA, I feel that we have nothing to be ashamed of.
Some excerpts
I have always loved visiting San Diego, but I’ve always been just another tourist. Still, armed with a list of what many San Diego experts consider some of the best of their best, I ventured forward. To my amazement, I found the cuisine to be state of the culinary art.Food and wine prices in San Diego have ascended to the same astronomical heights as those in my megalopolis. Service may still be a tad less sophisticated, but one thing is certain: San Diego chefs compare favorably to any on the West Coast and, in many cases, to chefs on both coasts and all points between. The area’s restaurants deserve more attention, and accolades, from those who consider themselves arbiters of the culinary arts—namely, the national food press.i moved out of san diego a couple of years ago, and maybe the food has suddenly gotten a lot better in the last few years. but, one thing that still hasn't changed is the city's inferiority complex especially in relationship to los angeles.
take this article for instance. now, if the point was that the food in sd wasn't as mediocre as it used to be, then that might be a fair point. but, the article loses all credibility when it claims that the best food in san diego is just as good, if not better, than the best food in new york, san francisco, and la.
let's just examine the article's logic to see how it came up with that claim. it makes the point that la doesn't have a little italy section, whereas san diego does. thus, according to the article, san diego has better italian food better than los angeles. does anybody else recognize how ridiculous that argument is? that's like saying nyc's little italy doesn't have any good italian restaurants, and thus san diego has a decent italian restaurant in its little italy, ergo san diego has better italian food than nyc and conviently ignoring italian places like babbo.
its not that surprising that the article would make these claims since the whole point of the magazine, san diego, is to sell readers about how good life is in san diego. if the article had been less than complimentary, do you really think it would have been printed? next thing the mag will be telling the reader is how the san diego union-tribune newspaper is just as good, if not better, than the new york times.
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for optimal cooking, you need to use the best possible ingredients. but, along with buying the best possible ingredients, you need to store them properly or else what's the point.
i don't know if anybody else runs into this problem, but when i store my veggies in the fridge, in the crisper in plastic bags, water condenses in the bags and so the veggies spoil faster. so, why is it recommended to store them in plastic bags then?
and, what do you do when you don't have anymore room in the crisper?
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i'm probably in a unique position to judge the sanyo vs. the zoji because i bought both models before deciding which one to return and which one to keep. each model had its own idiosyncracies and minor annoyances. some people have complained that the rice cooker won't tell you how long it will take to cook the rice, and only tell you that when its almost done. but, that is something that happens with both models, and is to be expected once you understand how the fuzzy logic mechanism works.
with the zoji, its time was in military hours vs. the sanyo which would report the time normally. and, i could see why some people found the zoji's beeping noise tiresome and annoying vs. the sanyo which doesn't make any noise to tell you that its started cooking or finished cooking the rice.
the sanyo didn't have a holder at the side to hold the rice paddle like the zoji and you need to clean the sanyo's top every time. but, ultimately, these are all minor complaints and has nothing to do with how well they cook the rice.
with brown rice, i was never completely that happy with either a zoji or sanyo fuzzy logic rice cooker. i bought the zoji neuro fuzzy logic rice cooker first, but returned it when i tried cooking brown rice. then, i bought a sanyo rice cooker with fuzzy logic, and while i found the brown rice to be somewhat better, i still found it to be somewhat lacking. the sanyo was about half the price of the zoji, but if the zoji had made better brown rice, i would have stayed with the zoji.
i don't know if the problem is that i wasn't cooking the full capacity of the rice cooker, but the fuzzy logic should have compensated for that. i suspect that if you really want perfect brown rice, you might need to get an induction heat rice cooker.
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i've always been confused by the concept of what savory is and what it tastes like. taste sensations like sweet or salty are pretty obvious, but i've yet to read a really good explanation of what savory is.
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Forschner 40520 8" chef's knife is indeed the best bargain knife out there. The Forschner, however, despite its weird Fibrox faux bolster, is pretty well made. It'll take and hold a decent edge. The examples I have on hand all came with the edge slightly rolled, requiring a quick touchup with a fine grit ceramic steel to set them straight. All in all, not a bad choice for a young cook starting out or as a second set of knives to outfit a beach house or lake cabin.
And, saving the best for last, the 8" Tojiro DP gyuto is the bargain of the century at $49.95.
i'm kind of confused- so which one is the better bargain out there.
on one hand, you say the forschner is the best bargain knife out there but then you later call the tojiro the bargain of the century? i'm looking for a versatile, reliable knife where i don't have to worry about sharpening it all the time. i know, i know... its not that hard, but i want to give it as a present to somebody i know won't do all that.
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why is the superior steel line considered superior to the master chef 2 line when the mc2 has 2 mm more aluminum? shouldn't that make the mc2 superior to the stainless steel then?
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i tried searhing to see if its been posted before as a topic, but i couldn't find it. has anybody used the riedel made specifically for target, and how did it stack up?
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I've narrowed down my choices of rice cooker between the Sanyo ECJ-D55S 5.5-Cup Micro-Computerized Rice Cooker and the Zojirushi NS-ZCC10 5-1/2-Cup Neuro Fuzzy Rice Cooker.
I can't tell the major differences between the Sanyo and Zojirushi. They seem like the same machines besides button layout and the canister to cook the rice in.
Is the zojirushi worth another $60 or is that just for the brand name?
the zojirushi is like the all-clad of rice cookers- a reliable, good brand but horribly overpriced. if you're too lazy to do any research, you can buy all-clad and zojirushi ricecookers and get a good product. but, with a modicum of research and effort, you could find a product that's even better or find a product that gives you the same quality but at a signifigant discount.
everybody loves zojirushi, and raves about it. no doubt about it, its superior to the cheap $20 rice cookers. but, while it gives superior rice to the cheapie rice cookers, that doesn't mean it makes better rice than sanyo's. the owners of zojirushi haven't bought a sanyo, so they haven't been comparing it to the sanyo.
sanyo doesn't state it in the name of the product, but it also uses fuzzy logic that everybody raves about with zojirushi. if you review amazon ratings, they get the same rating.
and, the sanyo is more inductive to use and therefore easier to read. with the zojirushi, you need to read their instruction booklet.
i also find the sanyo to be more aesthetically pleasing to the eye than zojirushi.
the sanyo will go on sale, and make it even more affordable to zojirushi.
Cooking an Entire Cookbook
in Cookbooks & References
Posted
that's a very interesting question, and something i was thinking about too although not necessairly about cooking all the dishes in the cookbook. instead, i was looking more for a source where if i picked out any recipe, it would work. i want a cookbook, where if you exactly follow the recipes, the dishes turn out great. but, the dirty little secret of cookbooks is how often those dishes don't work. some will, but just as often, they don't. for example, in many of those celebrity-driven cookbooks by famous chefs, the recipe will not give you the same dish as you'd find in their restaurant.