Mjx

Carob isn't bad on its own – I've actually enjoyed eating the pods – but I really resent efforts to treat it as a viable substitute for chocolate. My parents went on a health foods jag when I was a kid, and that was it for chocolate. Until you've had whole wheat, carob angel food cake lovingly presented to you as a treat, you just don't know the meaning of brutal irony (seriously: when I was about eleven, and my parents' health fit was at fever pitch, I read the The Story of O – you can't let a geeky kid loose in a library and not get hilarious results – and I was all 'Yeh, whatever...').

I don't know about mooning, but... Well. I guess I have a filthier mind..? Dumbest thing I've got is a small mortar and pestle, one of those hand-held ones (looks like this), but owing to its geometry (close-fit mortars and pestles only work properly if the pestle and interior of the mortar are some section of a sphere), it sort of useless: you can only pound up and down with the pestle, since as soon as you turn it in the mortar, most of the two surfaces lose contact with one another. As soon as I offload it on someone (I'm a sucker for finding good homes for even my least favourite possessions), I'll get one with better geometry (like this).

I'm afraid that I prefer a fairly flat-footed, descriptive approach to naming dishes (with exceptions made for dishes commemorating someone, e.g. Caruso), so virtually anything affected gets my goat. I've even bailed on eating at places that ridiculously misappropriated certain terminology (sorry, a 'pizza amuse bouche' is... not amusing. Especially when it is a doughy knot the size of my fist). I particularly loathe the terminology used at Starbucks ('venti'? 'latte'?! Just say 'twenty' and 'milk', and have done with!), and would avoid the chain even if I liked their offerings. Slightly unrelated: If a restaurant insists on using the nomenclature of a language spoken by none of the staff, they should commit to it to the extent of making certain they've nailed the spelling and usage... 'paninis' and 'beef borgonion' just do not inspire confidence. And also make me run as fast as possible in the other direction.

I have both a folder and an .rtf document labelled 'Recipes'. The folder contains all the .pdf files of recipes I've downloaded from the Internet. To find a specific recipe, I use Spotlight (I have a Mac) to find the name of the recipe (if I can remember it), or the central ingredient or resultant product (e.g. 'duck' or 'bread'). The .rtf file contains modified recipes, that is, recipes that are fundamentally good, but were poorly written or organized, so rather than download them as .pdf files, I edited them a bit. Since this file is also searchable, I just do a 'Find' search for the same sorts of terms I use to locate a recipe in a .pdf file. I annotate pretty heavily.

Oh, one other thing: salmon (or perhaps it was tuna) jerky. It looked and smelled fine, but had the weirdest tannic effect in my mouth, one of the strangest disagreeable sensations I've ever had. The effect was so strong, I couldn't actually taste it, because the entire inside of my mouth took on the texture and functional capacity of tissue paper.

I thought I'd read that too, and that it posed similar problems to rosemary; didn't mention it, because I figured I must have mis-remembered it.

Was this in Thailand, by any chance? I've read that the Thai people really enjoy bitter things. I really cannot eat instant mashed potatoes. Not because of their substandard texture, but because it vividly evokes my being young and stupid enough to live in conditions that included sleeping with a message in my pocket stating how I wanted my remains disposed of, should I be found frozen to death. When I first went off to uni. I lived for several months on instant mashed potatoes (made with hot water from the tap, because I couldn't afford to pay for electricity, so couldn't use the stove): they were the cheapest thing going. I'm not even that fond of proper mash any longer (oddly, I haven't gone off Victorian and Edwardian fiction, which is where I got that being 'poor but honest' business in the first place).

I measure out as much as will fill about half the dishes I'll be serving. Usually, I'm cooking for two, so I measure out what looks like one generous serving. If the pasta is fresh, I generally measure out what would be the actual, needed number of servings, but make them skimpy, to allow for the water that will be absorbed.

. . . . You make it sound like the only reason to get a culinary education is to go work in a restaurant. Lots of people study art who have no interest in becoming an artist...this is true of many different fields of study. . . . . Unfortunately, a lot of people go to art school because they/their parents figure 'Junior isn't academic, but should go to uni. So... art school it is!' This is not just me being judgemental or making a guess, either: My parents are both artists, and it was just 'understood' that I would be, too; I had the aptitude and the parental support, and did, in fact, end up in an art programme at a university for three years (at which point I decided I'd had enough, and switched to biomed.), during which I made the unpleasant discovery that art school is considered one of the staple options for those who aren't, well, particularly academic (I'm not talking about places like RISD... as much). Out of hundreds of students in the programme, I can think of exactly one who was both interested and skilled enough to make a career of something art-related (he does something in the film industry, now, as far as I can see). This isn't unique to the programme I was in, either, since I worked in NYC as a an artists' model for about a dozen years, and saw the inside of virtually every art school and division in the city (the people at sketch groups are another story, but you don't get a degree for that, and these days, a degree counts). I also went to the Swedish Institute, and saw the same attitude towards studying massage (in case anyone is wondering, yes, my student loan debt is colossal), so I'm wondering whether this might not part of the problem with many of the uninterested students at culinary schools. I'm not certain that the comparison to law school-graduates not entering practice is quite the same, however, since the education you get there gives you both the skills and the credibility to work in many other fields where legal knowledge (or habits of thought) are valuable.

Moist fruit + chocolate = granulation. I see this every year around the holidays, when my boyfriend's mother dips fruit in chocolate... but it doesn't seem to bother her that much, so I don't say anything. However, I'd recommend sticking to fruits with dry exteriors, and that are small (one-bite size); eating a large, wet, chocolate-dipped piece of fruit in more than one bite is an aggravating mess. For dipping in chocolate, I'd be inclined to go with a combination of really good quality shortbread, and dry fruit, especially apricots. Small whole strawberries are great, but this isn't the best time of year for good strawberries, and lousy strawberries are always a bit of a letdown. Dried figs stuffed with a bittersweet ganache, dipped in chocolate, and dusted with cacao, are really good. I've also topped this with a few salt crystals instead of the dusting of cacao, but I don't know what sort of crowd you're going to be serving, so that may not be workable. The figs can't be really dessicated, since that makes them too hard to stuff, although you can soften them in a little port (but that means having to let their surfaces dry before you dip them).

That doesn't seem crazily excessive (but when I visited Parma, they laughed at how salty I like things, and said it was because I grew up in Tuscany, so I may not be the best judge), I use about a box of salt a month, but we do eat rather a lot of pasta. I salt the water for pasta, but not for rice (I like soy sauce on it, and that doesn't work so well if it's already salty). I always brine poultry, but don't add salt to the oil or butter I rub over it before roasting. The water here is really hard, which seems to slow down the rate at which salt dissolves, so if I salt to the level I like right at the outset, things can end up too salty, even for me. I've also noticed that salt is less perceptible to me in hot food, than in the same food once it's cooled a bit, but this may be another aspect of the slow dissolve I mentioned. If I'm making something that has salt cooked into it, I use the amount in the recipe or suggested by my judgement (in the latter case, I use a bit less than I feel inclined to); if it's what you might call 'surface salting', I add just enough to be perceptible, as close to the beginning as possible, then, when it's nearly done, taste, and perhaps add a bit more.

The only foods I'd put on a 'worst' list are junk items specifically designed and marketed to little kids. Apart from that, however, any list of this sort is in direct denial of the concept of 'adult', which at its most fundamental level refers to someone who takes responsibility for his or her actions (i.e. considers their consequences, and is willing to be fully accountable for them, without whining or acting victimized), including the actions of eating pork rinds, or having cake and gin for breakfast. I mean, what's 'bad'? I find people who think they themselves naughtily adventurous because they eat baby eels that happen to be on the endangered list beneath contempt and childish, but that doesn't make the eels 'bad food', it just makes eating them now, and not allowing them time to recover their numbers, a stupid idea. Wait: Olestra actually is a bad idea, although I confess to finding its side effects entertaining to contemplate.

Ah, he knew about it, but it holds no interest for him, especially since he doesn't even like beer (and using an empty Lagavulin bottle probably wouldn't work out); he is drawn to things with many, many moving parts and, preferably, fragile electronics that require you to routinely pull apart the parent machine. That's his idea of fun (to be fair, he does that sort of thing really well). Unfortunately, his patience doesn't extend to most cooking projects, which is why I'm the one sitting here with the rotisserie, and a chicken that is starting to look like Saint Sebastian.

Alexandre Dumas' Dictionary of Cuisine (1958 ed.). I love flipping through it--some of the anecdotes in it are hilarious--and probably will try some of the recipes someday, but haven't yet, perhaps because the measurements are so vague. More probably, it's just my poor time management: I start skimming it, and the next thing I know, a couple of hours have been spent browsing, and eh, it's pasta again tonight.

I've toyed with the idea of trying beer-can chicken, and if you're thinking, 'Woman, why not just DO it?!', I'll have to come clean: the rotisserie attachment in the oven is my boyfriend's baby, and one of the reasons he specifically wanted our particular model of oven (he stands and gazes happily at the rotating chicken... for a few minutes, anyway). I'm... less enchanted by the device (a rotisserie makes perfect sense if your heat source for roasting a chicken is an open fire, but when you have a more or less state-of-the-art electronic oven, I don't quite get it). I can't complain of the results I'm getting now, which are gorgeous (if identical to those I get using the old pan and rack approach), but I would love to nail down the correct way to distribute a chicken's weight on a spit, if only because getting it right continues to elude me.

Our oven doesn't have a direct drive, but one like that you describe in the Smeg, which may be part of the problem. Still, the lag isn't too bad, and I'm hoping that firm trussing will solve the problem. Overall the Gaggenau has been a great oven, so I'm hoping this'll work out, too. A vertical rotisserie is appealing, but we've pretty much run out of room in our kitchen...

The complexity of an environment is definitely going to make a difference, but the Department of Health does work with the businesses; my sister mentioned that she was recently discussing the subject with the owner of the coffee shop where she gets her numerous daily caffeine fixes, and she (the owner) said they worked like demons to get their A grade. More than one visit is involved, so apparently there's an opportunity to fix things, which makes sense, since the idea is to get the places reasonably sanitary, not to penalize them for not meeting the guidelines/warn the public of an unadjusted status quo. Since there are still so many restaurants waiting to be graded, the percentage of A grades is certainly going to drop ('If there is an apparent preponderance of A’s, it is not because the city is trying to be generous, said Daniel Kass, a deputy health commissioner. “There are more A’s at this point,” he said, “because the A’s get issued immediately.”'). I'm a bit sceptical of the described recommendations form some of the A graded places, however, even though the rating is supposed to be for hygiene, nothing else (e.g. “Steaks have to be well done”; I've never heard of even carpaccio being an automatic violation, in and of itself). I think they're just pulling that stuff out of their air.

How are the flavour and texture of haggis (I read the description at the end of the step-by-step, but I'd love to hear more views)? This is something I've been curious about making/trying, but I've never even had an opportunity to try haggis; I briefly toyed with the idea of trying out a tinned one I saw at Meyers's of Keswick, then rejected the idea, since this is not likely the sort of thing that improves with tinning (they have a vegetarian version, too). I'm surmising that it must be like a cross between meatloaf and a coarsely-textured sausage. Please describe! If it's tasty I'd like to give it a go, and if there is enough whiskey going around, I could probably get this past my boyfriend without too many questions about the ingredients.

I'm definitely going to take this advice next time I break out the rotisserie; as I said, I've avoided doing this, since I was concerned that it would make for uneven roasting (and several sources say it doesn't matter whether or not the chicken is trussed), but actually, I've never seen this mentioned as a problem. Thanks Paul; that's actually one of the places I looked in the beginning. Part of the problem is that it (and most of the advice out there) seems to apply to rotisseries that are separate units intended for use over a grill, which (I think) have more powerful motors than the oven rotisserie in our kitchen (I think this particularly applies to the indication that trussing is optional; I'm also questioning the accuracy of 'Chickens are heavier of the back than on the breast side', since the bulk of the meat is at the front). Our rotisserie has no counterweight (perhaps they're not usual with oven models?), although it should be possible to rig one up, if I can't get the hang of arranging the chicken evenly on the spit. Tweaks to the motor would be tricky, since it would mean completely dismantling the oven to get at it, and I think I'd rather not go there, since the rotisserie isn't used that often (I actually like pan-roasting better, since you can deglaze the pan when you're done).

For a couple of years I lived in a part of the city where the tap water tasted like it was piped in from a swimming pool, so I first used a Brita pitcher, then switched to a Pur faucet attachment. Both brands and models (I found the faucet-mounted model more convenient) did a fine job of removing the chlorine taste from the water: the difference was very pronounced. The only reason for the brand switch was that I was in an 'I want it NOW' mood when I went shopping for the faucet-mounted model, and and Bed Bath & Beyond only carried the Pur models of these.

There are definitely brands and products that I avoid because I dislike some aspect of their policy/production/marketing, but I tend to research very carefully before making this sort of decision. Not naming any, however, because one person's opinion is... just that .

I have a hunch that most sweets that are assertively spiced tend to improve with time (the exact amount of time depending on various other factors). For example, spice cookies always seem to taste a bit raw when they're fresh out of the oven, and don't really hit their stride until the next day. I don't know how long they'd continue to improve, since I never have them around longer than two days.

I'm just rigorous about not having anything in the kitchen that isn't strictly necessary, and have managed to politely convince friends and family to not give 'because you love to cook' presents. Our kitchen is smallish and I'd dearly love to hang things on the walls, but because the kitchen is narrow (I think this is the reason), anytime I saute or fry something, the entire middle third of the kitchen and a bit beyond tends to be hit by oil vapour, even if I use a spaltter screen, and the idea of having to wipe down half the kitchen utensils on a daily basis makes me wilt.

If not less, then certainly not more, unless they're simply insane/compulsive conspicuous consumers... but those are the sorts of people who'll light up a cigarette with a $5 note to impress others, and I cannot imagine anyone focusing their sales/marketing efforts on trying to keep such from using dangerous quantities of a fundamental ingredient and component of the human body. But then again, I also think the current fuss about salt is misdirected.

I'm... confused. I think it's meant as satire..? I had to look this up on youtube, since I don't have TV access, and I realize that on youtube, things may be decontextualized. Satire/comedy or not, my immediate reaction was writhing embarrassment (at being female, at being even part Italian-American, at being alive...), but I kept watching, to try to figure out whther or not it's a joke. And I think it is. And I think whatsername is fully in on it, and enjoying it.