Katie Meadow

Being a lover of Viet food I have faith that the Vietnamese can turn something very good into something different but equally good. If enough people like it maybe it will stick and keep evolving. Lots of good sandwiches can be made with a baguette, but the Banh Mi is way up there at the top of the list. One of the most interesting sandwiches I had in NOLA was a Po' boy-Banh Mi crossover. The possibilities are endless, starting with fried oyster banh mi or maybe lemongrass shrimp po' boy. I can't remember exactly what was in the one I had, but sitting outside with a drippy sandwich and an alcoholic coffee drink was a stellar way to watch street musicians in the French Quarter. There are some great Asian soups that combine tomatoes, pineapple and prawns, so who knows, a Vietnamese crawfish boil could be really good. Hawaiian pizza isn't going away, that's for sure.

There are loads of restaurants that are "institutions" and famous for a uniqueness that can't be separated from an atmosphere or a time or a neighborhood. Sometimes they hang on just out of nostalgia, if nothing else and if enough people still go. Another such institution in the Mission in SF was Roosevelt Tamale Parlor. The food was dreadful and it was always crowded; I believe it has been revamped, but when I first went there 40 years ago it was already a time warp. It isn't so different from finding the foods of our childhood still comforting. The Chinese restaurants that were our typical Sunday dinner on the Upper West Side of NY in the fifties and sixties were not places I would go out of my way to eat now, but I'm happy they were there. Sam Wo's was never known as a place for gourmet food. It was economical and accessible and may even have seemed exotic once upon a time to white people who didn't come to Chinatown very often.

I use Diamond Crystal Kosher for all cooking and use Maldon or grey salt for finishing. Recently I tasted Morton's Kosher salt and it is pretty different from Diamond. The Morton's is small grain, not as flaky and on the tongue it tastes peculiar.

Mostly I am not fond of fish and cheese together. Smoked fish is a bit different, as in the above mentioned lox and cream cheese. I will never turn that down; I was weaned on it. I was recently at a lunch where a smoked trout was served alongside another platter with a manchego, but they were eaten separately, not paired; both were very good, but together it would have been a salt lick. A classic example of fish and cheese would be a tuna melt, no? I used to find that unappealing, but have to admit that if I make it myself I really enjoy it. Other seafood like shrimp and lobster might be more forgiving. Lobster mac n cheese seems to be big these days. I frequent a Mexican place that serves a great crispy shrimp taco which has some melted cheese down at the fold. In Italian food I'm not so keen; I never liked shrimp / cheese risotto, and don't like grated cheese on a dish of shrimp and pasta. Clams Casino has always seemed like a terrible idea. I grew up in a household definitely biased against New England clam chowder in favor of Manhattan style. When it comes to clams, it must be a dairy-free zone.

Yes best price so far: I added it to my list above

I'm going to try my garlic press first and work my way up.

Just out of curiosity I checked prices. I didn't compare shipping . Amazon prime of course is no shipping cost. Delta Grind / yellow grits only 2 lbs $8.00 Anson Mills / coarse antebellum white grits 12 oz $5.95 Geechie Boy direct ship from Edisto Is./ white grits or yellow 1.5 lbs $5.95 Geechie Boy Amazon Prime / same 1.5 lbs $13 Carolina Plantation / yellow or white 2lbs $5.95

Actually I have a potato ricer. Right you are, I'll try that first! It so happens that I had a spinach gratin planned for tomorrow.

Pathetic way to market a squeezer with the citrus upside down. If you didn't know better you might be pretty disgusted by the product. I have two beautiful squeezers that I bought a zillion years ago in a market in Mexico---I'd never seen that type before. They are really hard durable plastic and the colors are snappy yellow and snappy green, and best sized for smaller limes. Honestly I have never found a more effective tool for juicing a couple of lemons or oranges than an old fashioned wooden reamer.. Yeah, you do have to strain out the seeds, but the quantity of juice you get is astounding. Anna, you are brilliant. I'm going to use my Mexican squeezer for spinach, although I suspect that I will then want a bigger size. Personally I like my spinach right side up.

Okay, clarify for me please: I always think of Yorkshire pudding as being made with beef drippings or tallow or some kind of meat fat. If you make it with butter is it still Yorkshire pudding? I think of that basic recipe made with butter as popovers, which I love. Dutch Baby never did much for me, but then I've always thought of it (perhaps incorrectly) as just a giant pancake, and I'm less inclined toward sweets at breakfast or pancakes for dessert. I can certainly see eating 'batter pudding"for breakfast either way, as ingredients or preference dictates. I don't cook roasts or much beef at all, so my drippings are limited, but I consider real Yorkshire pudding a treat. Although I might not want to put jam on my pudding if it was made with beef fat, but you never know. And anyone with children knows that most of them will put sugar on just about anything, given half a chance. My husband puts jam or marmalade on his popovers, but I like them just plain for breakfast. I can easily imagine that leftover Yorkshire pudding would be adapted to the use of of sugar or syrup or jam; after all you make the best of what you've got, and you dress it up however it pleases.

I buy my grits from Geechie Boy Mill on Edisto Island. Delicious and not so pricey as Anson Mills. I freeze my grits. Geechie Boy doesn't sell the range of products that Anson Mills does, but they have added rice, sea island peas, blue popcorn and some other products. It never occurred to me to freeze popcorn, but that's interesting. We buy popcorn in smallish amounts and it doesn't sit around too long.

You? I would not be shocked. But then, the various ways in which people spend money--or won't spend it--rarely amazes any more.

I'm not sure why I find it so funny that the ingredients include natural smoke flavoring, and then, just to reassure us, not-so-natural smoke flavoring. Not that I understand how natural smoke flavoring gets into the can. Maybe they just set fire to a pile of sodium and turn a fan in the direction of the canning room.

Another fan of Cochon. That was my favorite meal in NOLA. It was a late dinner, Wish I could remember what kind of fish I had, but it was the best fish ever. Redfish? One fish, two fish, redfish, bluefish. Grilled, simple. Everything else was really good too, but it's a blur three years later. Hope you got a chance to go to the Backstreet Cultural Museum in Treme. Really amazing. Also memorable, but maybe because it was so murderously hot, was Erin Rose bar in the French Quarter. They have an alcoholic coffee milkshake, sort of like an alcoholic version of Vietnamese iced coffee. But of course you have to like coffee milkshakes to begin with. Also very interesting to me were crossover sandwiches that were part po' boy and part banh mi.

I find the inclusion of both peanut butter and sesame to be a little strange. For making Chinese dishes I find these following two products far more satisfying than plain peanut butter and middle eastern tahini: One is Jade brand sichuan peanut sauce. It is a bit spicy, is halfway between a smooth and a chunky style and is extremely versatile. When it comes to sesame flavor in Chinese food I find that Chinese brands of sesame paste are better than tahini. The Jade brand sauces are available from most large markets that have a variety of ethnic condiments. Sesame paste is available at most Asian markets. The NYT recipe for take out noodles benefits greatly from the use of these two substitutions. Personally I like to make either a peanut sauce sauce noodles or a sesame sauce noodles instead of combining both. But I do agree with Smitten Kitchen that thinning out the sauce is a good way to go. Use a little less gloppy peanut product or sesame product and up the soy, vinegar, chicken broth or whatever.

Anna, I wish I could lend you my vacuum cleaner. Otherwise known as my nephew, my husband and several other men in my husband's family. Twelve lousy macaroons? Say no more. Barring that solution, skip the pudding but not the pig.

I have a few high end pots and pans that I adore, but for a designated stock pot that's big and tall, I can't see the advantage of high end over relatively thin stainless steel, which would be lighter and cheaper. I make chicken stock and freeze it in quart batches at least every other month. When it's full almost to the brim it's pretty heavy. No idea what the size is, but it holds several pounds of carcass, bones, backs, etc and I can often get five or six quarts of rich stock from one long simmer.

I do just about all the cooking for my husband and me. So, when I am alone and the blinds are drawn I don't want to cook anything at all. I scrounge, eat leftovers if they are available, or just defrost some chicken broth and make some white rice to dump in it. Eggs may be possible too. And then there's always toast. But we don't buy canned soups or boxed mixes of any kind, so those are not options. I have been known to have a glass of rye and a bowl of my favorite potato chips or popcorn and call it a meal. But yes, I remember those elementary school days when my daughter wouldn't eat my home made macaroni and cheese, but would eat Kraft. That was very sad, and I assume she had it at friends' houses and that set her standard. And there were desperate times when I ate that stuff along with her. But those days are long gone. Who knows; the future could be very weird indeed.

Many Indian vegetable dishes are already vegan or can be easily made so. That's my go-to if I have vegans to feed: cauliflower curry, green bean curry, mixed veggies, the addition of chard or other greens to a dish, etc. Curry leaves if you can get 'em. Using some tomatoes as a part of the broth is great--fresh in season or canned Italian tomatoes in winter. With a tomato based broth a little coconut milk is nice too. Serve with chutneys (easy to make vegan, and some vegan ones are easy to buy as well), cut apples or fresh pineapple other fruit. And have raita on the side for non-vegans.

Without analyzing a single, umm, "fact" in that article I would go out on a limb and say it is a collection of misinformation and dopey assumptions. I suspect no religious or cultural group evolving in the fertile crescent or the middle east ate a gluten free diet once they figured out how to grow and process wheat.. Most every culinary culture that has access to wheat (that I can think of offhand) makes some version of a flatbread or a wrap or a pocket. Not eating pigs / lard never stopped anyone from making a great flatbread that could be crisped or rolled or stuffed or dipped, whether it's a blintz or a burrito. I venture that if you were a Jew who immigrated to Mexico some time after wheat was brought to Mexico in the 1500's, you jumped on the idea of flour tortillas made with something other than lard; it's done all the time. And you made a chocolate babka to give to your new neighbors. Except maybe at Passover. And since this is the lunch thread and we are talking about cross cultural influence I am about to make a late lunch using up a bunch of leftovers : Hawaiian stir-fry on rice, accompanied by grilled flour tortillas (hanging around since Monday) from Trader Joe's, definitely not made with lard. The stir fry will include stragglers of cabbage, chinese chives, some pineapple left over from a smoothie bender, some smokey ham left from making a ham stock and the meat from exactly one spare rib from Sunday.. The sauce will be made from the usual suspects that I always have around: soy sauce, oyster sauce, sesame oil and rice wine and a bit of that ham stock.. I won't suggest it, but I wouldn't be surprised if my husband takes a look at his stir fry over rice and his tortilla and tries to make a burrito. Hot sauce choices are Crystal Louisiana or Sambal Oelek.

There are many thrills to be had with southern cooking. I grew up in NY and now live in CA but am a devotee of Duke's mayo, stoneground grits, shrimp n grits, jambalaya, greens cooked in ham stock, fried green tomatoes, pan fried apples and red beans and rice. But spare me Paula Deen and spare me pimento cheese. I've eaten it a few times when traveling in the south and can't for the life of me understand the appeal. It could be lowbrow or artisanal and it wouldn't make any difference to me--it's a horrid concept. If I want to spread cheese on a cracker or a baguette, please let it be soft ripened brie or chèvre or Le Tur, or brebis..... There, I'm sorry. Ignore me and have a great day!

I don't watch the Food Network, nor do I jump into "challenges" readily. I'm challenged enough, thank you! But I can see how some challenges could be fun, if you like that sort of thing, and as pointed out, clicking on a thread is a choice. However, there was something very basically wrong with the $5 challenge, and it speaks to the points above about whether a meal for $5 is a useful topic. Yes, plenty of people don't have the luxury of buying whatever strikes their fancy, or are on a tight budget. If we wish to serve that need it can't be a game. Buying all the ingredients for one $5 dinner is in no way a practical solution to eating as well as possible on $15 a day (or something like that.) No one wants to eat badly for $5 a meal. Some people can use help figuring out how to make a week's worth of decent meals for an average of $5 per meal: in other words, how to plan and shop for real value, learning how to cook large amounts at a time, learning to re-purpose leftovers, learning to cook less expensive cuts of meat, etc. Really, like other aspects of cooking, these are skills that go far beyond looking at the price on a package. So, on the topic of what makes a good challenge, it helps to think it through.

Right before I do the cross-hatch thing with a fork I always wonder...what if I didn't? But then I do, because I think...what if I don't?

Hilarious translation of the "omeletzpn" and despite what appears to be the high price, clearly you are not just getting any nonstick omelet pan. You are getting the viagra of cooking utensils. Read all the way to the end.

Seems to me it is difficult to get even a bit of browning without toughening the eggs. I go for blond or golden, and only a little runny inside. I wish I knew where my mother got her taste for jelly or jam omelets; it is hard to imagine my grandmother making such a thing, but who knows. She wasn't much of a cook though she did make mean gribenes! I must have liked those jelly omelets when I was a kid, but later they seemed rather strange. And the kind my mother made were filled with run-of-the-mill supermarket jelly or jam. I suspect I may have eaten Welch's grape jelly omelet at some point. The great French American fusion breakfast! If someone put a gun to my head and made me chose between a jelly omelet and a nutella omelet I would go for the jelly. I know, no one asked.