Dakki

Hey, at least it wasn't the Semi-Homemade Cooking with Sandra Lee Complete DVD Collection.

Interesting example. I'm sure that there have been plenty of Vietnamese refugees in the US and elsewhere who have used ersatz pho ingredients because they can't source the real thing, and I'd certainly find it difficult to tell those folks that their soup is inauthentic. Of course, if Cheesecake Factory tries to sell that as pho, it's another matter. I wouldn't dream of telling the hypothetical refugees their pho wasn't authentic, but wouldn't they recognize it as an adaptation themselves? I lived in the US for years and had to use a some substitutes, particularly in chiles. When I had dinner guests I'd point out this or that dish is usually made with ingredient X but is pretty decent with Y instead. "Traditional" instead of "authentic" is becoming appealing to me.

This reminds me of the problem of authority in the English language. Unless we all accept one single authoritative dictionary (or culinary reference book) there will always be some differences in what we consider correct usage (or authentic). For one rather dumb example, my family's pozole recipe is of the red variety; on posting it in another forum I was told in no uncertain terms that "real" pozole is green, as any New Mexican knows. Rather than waste my internet breath on explaining that pozole is made in white, red and green varieties (that I've eaten; some guy in the Tarahumara mountains makes it fuschia for all I know) in different regions of old Mexico and according to the preference of the cook and the available ingredients I simply changed the recipe title to "Red Pozole Nuevo Leon Style." So, "authentic" to one guy is "inauthentic" to someone else. And, maybe, some authorities aren't as authoritative as they think they are. Digging a little deeper, we come to the problem of chili. Chili is interesting because of the purists' rule that chili cannot contain beans, a rule that is ignored by (my observation) well over half of chili recipes. "No beans" aside, chili is the sort of anything-goes dish where the authenticity of the dish is determined not by the ingredients but by a certain chili gestalt. My brother (local chili cookoff champion, '07-'09) reports that Heston Blumenthal's chili recipe is "tasty, but not chili." So here's the problem, in a nutshell: Most people will recognize chili with beans as chili, but the people who are presumably most expert on chili, such as cookoff organizers, do not. Is chili with beans "real" chili? Does common usage trump expertise? I'm going to be the elitist jerk and say no. "Chili" (containing beans) may be used for the stuff but it is no more "real" chili than processed cheese food is "real" cheese, no matter how many people call it that. I agree it can be very tasty but be prepared to offer an explanation ("I know its not authentic but...")if you serve it to the wrong person. (I'll be happily scarfing it down; "tasty" trumps "authentic" 10 times out of 10). Is Heston's chili not authentic because it doesn't taste like what you'd expect chili to taste like? Again, I'm going to be the jerk and say yes. Even if it's not easy to define there is a very real chili gestalt (and, presumably, a carbonara gestalt, a club sandwich gestalt and so on). Fail to capture it in a dish and you're guilty of false advertising, even if it is tasty. So where am I going with all this? Basically, I think for most cases "authenticity" can be more or less defined as capturing a dish's gestalt as opposed to not substituting a single ingredient. The importance of authenticity is a separate matter: are your guests/patrons looking forward to something like you'd see in a Tokyo izakaya or do they want some tasty, non-challenging food in the Western idea of the izakaya style? It all amounts to meeting their expectations, I guess.

Watching the heck out of this.

The SAK (actually Dutch surplus) on my keychain does a lot of kitchen work at other people's houses. I've heard horror stories about frame locks and liner locks (similar designs) and wouldn't mess with them, period. The Ryback is one such knife.

What's been mentioned before and roasting jalapenos. They smell like victory.

Brewing show, to go with my new obsession. Do it practical (I'm thinking Alton Brown's style here), not "(Food Celebrity) visits the world's top breweries and discusses ingredients you'll never get your hands on." I'd also like to see something like Jacques Pepin's Complete Techniques in a video format. I don't mean take the book straight to TV, rather a show that teaches technique, not necessarily limited to classic Western stuff; it could cover sous vide, Chinese cleaver techniques and so on.

Ah, my bad. I should have noticed when you mentioned plastic lids.

What kind of enamelware? Cast iron or steel? I'm moderately familiar with both. Enameled steel is cheap cheap cheap and more or less the default cooking vessel in Latin America. Most people will tell you it is utterly useless but I think it's OK as long as you can deal with throwing it out when the enamel chips, exposing the underlying steel so it can rust. Frankly stainless is superior. Enameled cast iron is a whole other kettle of fish. It runs from quite expensive to laughably expensive but IMHO it can't be beat for braises and other slow cooking methods. It has all the properties of "naked" cast iron plus a non-reactive surface, so it holds heat well but conducts it badly. You also should not expose it to extremely high heat, unlike regular cast iron. I'm under the impression that the enameling is different from the sort used on enameled steel, as it has a different appearance and doesn't chip as easily, although you should definitely care for it. I wouldn't want to go all anything in my kitchen. Different materials have different properties that make them better for different things.

Spend a little more and get a Sharpmaker, or quite a bit more and get an Apex.

So he's basically The Most Interesting Man in the World for the freeweights and fake tans set? As for signs of the Apocalypse, Sandra Lee got her show years ago, so...

You're so lucky. I wish people would acknowledge me as a scratch-made cook and not "the dude who buys beans 5 kg at a time."

I have a microwave cookbook packed away somewhere that included gems such as roast beef and (I think) roast turkey, in the microwave. IndyRob... whatever, man. I'll take the poor huddled masses and their delicious cuisine over prune sandwiches (or "American cheese") anyday.

It's all skanky but I think the top of the fridge is the worst. I put tomatos up there to ripen, you see, and sometimes I forget I have them...

Once you consistently get the knives shaving sharp with the coarse stone you should try following up with the higher grits. It really does make a difference in performance. It also impresses the heck out of people when you can whittle hair. Just sayin'.

Not a nickname but my habit of buying ingredients wholesale or in mass quantities has been remarked upon. When I find something particularly nice or particularly cheap I make an investment, what's wrong with that?

Softcore. Show us the inside!

Sorry Chris, I asked around and nobody I know freezes nixtamal dough. Some people actually gave me a funny look... anyway I was told you can keep the prepared dough 1 or 2 days in the refrigerator, tops, before it turns nasty. On the other hand I've seen tamal recipes online that allow for freezing the dough if you make it beforehand. They don't specify any special method for defrosting but as you know tamales are cooked in moist heat, unlike tortillas on the comal. (Firefox spellchecker chokes on tamal but swallows tamale(s). How screwed up is that?)

I suspect the validity of the test on a couple of points: -There doesn't seem to be any kind of statistical study done on the general population correlating these types or traits with some kind of measurable data. I'd be more convinced if they could show something like "98% of serial killers are ESTP" or "INTJ are 52% more likely to overpay for their auto insurance than the general population." -Each variable has only one dimension, which is obviously (to me) oversimplified. E.g., an "introspective" might be a true loner who just doesn't care about the opinions of other people or they might be coping with shyness and cares too much about those opinions. An "intuitive" might make knee-jerk decisions because they are completely familiar with the contexts and patterns of how (whatever) behaves, and doesn't need to think about it or they might just have poor impulse control. Or a need to look decisive in front of the troops. And so on. -Frankly, the descriptions kind of read like those "know your personality through astrology" things. They're worded in such a way that I think most people are going to recognize themselves in any of them. So, uh, that came more critical than I really meant to be. It's an interesting topic and it's fun reading what everyone comes out as and how they think about food and cooking.

Cool. I'm going to break this up so I can reply properly: Negative. Unless it's baking (where I follow the recipe word by word every single time) I wing it from the first time. My focus is on technique rather than formula. I guess we're opposites on the first part. I tend to go on kicks where I'll make one dish three times a week for months, until I feel I've mastered it; then it becomes part of my regular rotation. I'm not big on bread (baking is my weakest area, and I don't really enjoy bread the way some people do; to me it's just a wrapper for sandwiches and a vehicle for sauces and gravies) and I'm not a wine person, but beer brewing interests me and I'm fascinated by pickling and aged charcuterie, both of which involve microfauna. I am also very interested in heat. I think that statement applies to me as well. Technique is everything to me. Don't give me a recipe for your prizewinning fried chicken; help me understand how the different coatings produce varied results, what spices do and don't work and and how you handle the heat to get a crispy outside and a moist but thoroughly cooked interior. I'd probably kill myself if I had to work on a line, and I don't think I'd make a good fit anywhere in the hospitality industry. I like research and identifying and solving problems, not doing repetitive work or dealing with people. Other stuff you didn't mention, but that might be relevant: I'm a minor-league knife nut and I heavily favor traditional methods over cutting-edge. My prized possessions are my kitchen knives and my cast iron skillets. I sharpen my own knives, buy my cast iron "naked," and otherwise try to do things on my own. I distrust "professionals" who just want to finish the job and get paid. When I'm going to make or buy something new, I research it to death beforehand. How do you match on those? EDIT: I just noticed there's no INTPs in your original sample. According to the test page we're pretty rare but there's two of us posting in this thread. Coincidence?!

Going through some Flor de Mayo I bought way too much of back in Spring. A change from Pintos.

Take your business elsewhere. Ain't no bacon worth that attitude.

INTP. IMHO Jungian stuff is a lot of fun but should be taken with a heaping dose of salt. EDIT: This is the INTP short description from that site.

Ditto to what Linda said. Looking forward to this book!

I'm having my Dad cook his family's dishes and writing it down. It's a pretty unique cuisine, Strasbourg ghetto aesthetic and techniques with northern Mexico ingredients. None of this stuff actually has a recipe; most of it is "add ingredient x until the mix tastes right, then simmer until it looks right, then add y until it tastes right again." So the notebook is more a narrative thing ("how I made chipotle beef chorizo") than a set of coherent instructions. I'm going to have to bite the bullet and make all that stuff and actually measure everything one of these days.