mskerr

Hi all - I am a very casual person. Not a single fancy or formal bone in my body. My partner and most of our friends and acquaintances are the same way. Also pretty young (26) and not experienced at all in entertaining guests. My parents don't really cook, so our rare occasional with guests involved something simple like a box of pasta and a jar of sauce and a basic iceberg salad and some garlic bread. Parties were potlucks, with the de riguer hotdogs, burgers, iceberg and three-bean salads, big bags of white buns, mud pie, etc. At the relatives', it was more like salami, cheese, crackers, a big cheesy lasagna, salad, and cake. I myself love trying my hand at all sorts of cooking - but not tackling too many ambitious projects on the same day. How do you all handle feeding laid-back guests/ crowds? I would like to do a bit more than I do now - usually putting out a plate with some crackers, cheese, and salami and then making a larger amount of one of our humble weeknight standards. I don't care to get too fancy or formal or over-involved, but do want to think beyond the cliches - the usual carrots and ranch, and chips and french onion dip sort of thing. (I should also mention, the men-folk are always keen to grill - i.e., stand around and drink beer- but usually by the time they get the coals just right and the meat slightly under- or over-cooked, its 11 pm.) Cheers!

patrickamory - Cheers! Your reply definitely helped satisfy my curiosity. Basically, spending hours lovingly preparing a meal is presumably a joy shared by most, if not all, on this forum, but on a daily basis, cooking can be far humbler, though often just as satisfying! I am glad to know I'm in good company. Totally agree on the traditional regional recipes over more modern/avant-garde dishes! And you are lucky to be able to share the kitchen so well with your partner - I am a bit of a control freak, apparently, and not that fun to share the kitchen with, apparently

Yes, please, send me tips on how to negotiate the Chinese market for good deals! I am gonna hit up the one nearby (1 hr) soon- my first time at a full-on Chinese market. And I've been wondering about MSG & umami quite a bit lately - was actually gonna start a new thread about how to boost umami aside from just adding msg or more salt, but then I've been reading more about msg being benign, and I've started to think maybe it's a good, simple solution.

38, and I'm trying to pare down my collection more. I'm a bit obsessive about getting rid of anything I don't use and trying to stay more or less mobile (I love moving), so I am often donating books to the library or passing them on to friends. I get rid of cookbooks which are stunning or gorgeous, but impractical for me, and I often get rid of cookbooks in favor of replacing them with something more advanced. I have a good stack of food magazines, but I also go through them and rip out the pages I want, and toss the rest. I do have a box of xeroxed recipes from library cookbooks. I, too, am that crazy lady always picking up 15 cookbooks at the library.

Yes, that is exactly what I am looking for! Thank you.

Growing up near Philly, I thought Italian food was pasta with red sauce, garlic bread, meatball sandwiches, calzones, and salami and cheese. (All of which I love, I should mention!) The more I learn about Italian cooking, I realize how much bigger it is than my much-beloved Italian-American childhood favorites. Not having been to Italy yet, nor even to a really authentic Italian restaurant, nor hanging out with any Italian grandmas (I grew up in, apparently, one of the few families in my area where none of the women were interested/skilled in cooking whatsoever), I find genuine Italian cuisine to be just about as mysterious as, say, Indonesian. How would you describe Italian cuisine to a confused but absolutely intrigued person like myself? Cheers!

Hi all - I often wonder how other members of this forum cook on a daily basis. Like, today I've been looking through Zakary Pelaccio's "Eat With Your Hands," and the Ripert cookbooks, and Pepin, and while everything looks great, it's just not gonna happen for me at home at this stage. Same with a lot of recipes I read (and specifically restaurant cookbooks) - I always wonder how many people are actually taking on a 4-page recipe for dinner. I wish I was that much of a pro, but I am a humble beginner and can't foresee it happening anytime soon. (Also, if I had an unlimited budget, I'd experiment a lot more!) On an average day, I either make up a big dutch oven of soup (which then makes up most of our diet for the rest of the week), attempt to semi-improvise dishes based on recipes, or try out a recipe from Cook's Illustrated, Saveur, middle-brow cookbooks, or something totally random. Lots of hits and misses, by my judgment, but luckily my partner, our mates, and our families are not fussy at all and generally appreciate anything homemade. (I should mention I currently live in the boonies, no really good restaurants in town, not a lot of flash produce or meat.) We also enjoy a good old fry-up of eggs, fish sticks, and potatoes, or frozen pierogies, or even a bowl of cereal from time to time for pretty much any meal. Or ramen followed by lollipops. Or the good old red-sauce standbys of my mid-Atlantic childhood. I aspire to cook amazing food, but on a daily basis, it's often pretty lowbrow/ borderline trashy. Please let me how you cook, in all honesty! Edited for spelling.

Harrysnapperorgans - Good thinking. Yes, NZ is spoiled for good meat! And game, and seafood, and dairy... lucky buggers.

Do you think frozen bacon fat would work well too? I like the idea of adding some sauce in there, though I don't know if I'd do a pure sauce middle without fat. Something about meat juice just sounds so right.

All great ideas! I love pickle juices in Bloody Mary's, so maybe I will try giardiniera juice next. Gazpacho sounds great, and right up my alley since I currently have more tomatoes in the garden than I know what to do with. I shlepped it to Al's #1 Beef in Chicago from the west coast and forgot to order the sweet and hot pepper mix. Any tips on how to approximate it? Sounds right up my alley. Maybe some cured Italian pork and cheese too? Cheers, sounds delicious.

Awesome. I think that gave me a reason to get around to making a salad from the garden tonight.

Cheers! Do you have a recommended salad dressing recipe?

Also - perhaps I should mention that I rarely cook chicken. I'm way more into lamb and beef. Usually when I need chicken stock it's for a meatless saffron risotto, or lamb soup, or a bean soup, or Spanish rice, etc. I don't have chicken scraps lying around, so when I need chicken stock, I have a choice between going out and buying chicken from the supermarket to make my own, or using store-bought bouillon. From everyone's responses here, it sounds like one easy solution for me is: eat more chicken! I keep meaning to hit up the Chinese market (1 hour away). I'm sure there'll be all sorts of goodies. Unfortunately, since our truck doesn't have A/C I'll be waiting until this months-long 100+ weather breaks. I haven't done a side- by- side taste test of my own yet of free-range/kosher/organic chickens vs. conventional. I just read taste tests on Cooks Ilustrated, Serious Eats etc. My hesitance to buy the Foster's chicken is mostly bc I read way too much about the meat industry in my old veg days.

http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2010/02/the-burger-lab-presenting-the-flood-burger.html?ref=search On Serious Eats, Kenji posted a recipe for the Flood Burger. It's made like a Jucy Lucy, but with frozen burger juice (made by cooking up a burger, squeezing out all the juice with a citrus juicer, and freezing it) instead of cheese in the middle. It's supposed to ensure delicious flavor throughout the whole burger, as opposed to having a lovely pink center without much beefy flavor. What do you think? Anyone want to give it a go? Looks awesome to me. Kenji says the leftover beef from the first patty is good in long-simmered sauces, among other things, so there's no waste, to boot.

I'll read the review after I read the book. I like to make up my own mind about things, and while the book probably isn't hugely revelatory to a lot of experienced foodies, it's a really interesting summer read for me, especially since I don't know anything about economics.

We've all done some embarrassing sh*t working in restaurants. What's your most embarrassing moments? For me, I was a couple months into my first line cook job (breakfast). Peak tourist season, customers lined out the door before we opened. I season the home fries liberally. Service begins. We send out the first ten or so breakfasts. Everyone in the restaurant starts choking. Turns out, I'd accidentally grabbed the cayenne pepper instead of the home fry seasoning. Had to kiss the waitstaff's bums for, oh, the next month. (Dropping five gallons of pancake batter all over the floor of the line when we were in the weeds wasn't my finest moment either). As a new waitress... Wine made me really nervous. (I'm a beer gal.) Wine connoisseurs are some of the fussiest people on earth, and I wasn't trained at all for proper wine service. And I had a crappy opener to boot. Once I was so nervous trying to open a bottle for a young couple, I actually broke the entire neck off the bottle, sending glass fragments and wine all over their table, and possibly onto them. (They were too polite to say anything.) I went back and got them another bottle and opened it properly, and started to take their order when I realized my hand was bleeding. I froze, not knowing what to do, but the woman saw it and told me not to worry about them and go take care of myself... Luckily they were a very laid- back couple. The rest of the night was brutal though. Luckily, a few years later, I can laugh at these things, but at the time, they were so humiliating.

Agree! I spend quite a bit of the day drooling thinking about Pasties and kiwi meat pies (esp. steak & cheese, or mince, cheese & onion). For me, it just doesn't get better than meat in pastry. They should be everywhere. Also - Panzerotti! Like deep- fried calzone. Haven't seen them outside of Jersey. Awesome munchies food.

I'd be perfectly happy to buy a kosher chicken. But where I live, it's a $5 Foster's chicken or a $19 Coastal Range Organic chicken. Edited bc I accidentally posted while still typing.

Yep, it does. Some of the recipes I've read call for a whole chicken, which is completely discarded after making the stock (one from Edna Lewis, for example) so I think I had the wrong impression. Also, I really do use heaps and heaps of stock. I'm a soup junkie.

Another neglected jar I found in the back of my pantry -bought it a few months back and just don't know what to do with it. Please send me some tips!

Nice! I haven't seen the organic version yet, even at health stores. I will have to track some down. Even when I do start making my own stock, it's always nice to have a back- up in a pinch. Plus, no one that I cook for is fussy at all. My partner and friends (and, lots of time, I) are all quite happy to have fish sticks and fried eggs for dinner. But over the long- term, I would like to cook as well as I can. Anyone have tips on finding local chickens from farmers? And do they work out any cheaper, or is it all about better quality? I think Craigslist would probably work.

I've heard of adding a little bit of vegemite or marmite to soups and stews. I haven't tried it yet. Any recommendations?

Started reading Tyler Cowen's book "An Economist Gets Lunch: New Rules For Foodies" and find it really interesting! He is against food snobbery, and against any notion that great food has to cost a lot, and goes about explaining all sorts of things from an economist foodie's point of view. I think his main mission is to explain to people how to find great food at small prices. He makes all sorts of points on all sorts of topics: "why great city centers are bad for food," why crappy decor can be a sign of great food, how to get honest answers out of your waiter, why the best barbecue is found at places that open early in the morning in towns of less than 50,000 people, why good ribs are much more widely available than good brisket, the economics behind (in his opinion!) why Texas BBQ is better than North Carolina BBQ, why Thai food is becoming bad in the US, why Pakistani food is on average better than Indian food in the US, how to get 'real' Chinese food at an Americanized Chinese restaurant... And it goes on! Also, early in the book he has a chapter called "How American Food Got Bad". He blames four things: (1) Prohibition. (2) restrictions of immigration in the early twentieth century, around the time of prohibition, the Great Depression, and World War 2. (3) Kids and (4) Television. "[Americans] also spoil our children by catering to their food preferences, but this damages dining quality for everyone. American parents produce, buy, cook, and present food that is blander, simpler, and sweeter, and in part that is because the kiddies are in charge. Children love sweets, French fries, unornamented meats, and snacks. Since it is easier to cook for the whole family, American food followed this simpler, blander path. You simply cannot count on children to monitor the quality of food. Few children will complain that the vegetables are not fresh, that the sauce is under- seasoned, or that the fish is overcooked. In France, in contrast, the wishes of children , whether for food or otherwise, are more frequently ignored. The kids are simply expected to eat what the adults feed them. A lot of American food is, quite simply, food for children in a literal sense. It's just that we all happen to eat it." Though he also says American food has a bad reputation it doesn't fully deserve, as much of our finest produce could not survive shipping to, say, Europe without a serious dent in quality, so much of what the world thinks of as American food is things like McDonalds, which is not exactly a flattering representation. Anyone else reading it?

After cleaning and reorganizing my pantry yesterday, I found all those neglected random ingredients that I bought a year ago and still haven't used. One of them is Carlo brand pomegranate concentrate. How does this relate to pomegranate molasses? Any tips on what to use it for? Cheers!

Book is gorgeous, recipes look great, but haven't tried making anything yet. Anyone here cooking from it?