huiray

I would hope that such postings as mine here might simply be thought of as records of what one's experiences were food-wise, as is wont with the thesis of the existence of eGullet - but I shall try to limit such postings in the current times in deference to your murmurings and that of another Canadian poster. :-)

That implies that you think most folks do think of food other than the "standard stuff" (what is that, please?) to be "ethnic". That means you think "culture aspects" of the food is outside of the usual experience of folks you are acquainted with, or that you expect to be the folks here on eG. I would suggest that is not true, and I would also suggest that you examine what *seems* to be your preconceptions. Is there any notions about Western European food that you might have in mind as "The Norm"?

Oh my. But glad you got some stuff and made it home (presumably) with your spirits tanked up. ;-)

A nice Wine Dinner at Petite Chou Bistro last night, 2016-0203. No pics, sorry. Not an event/gathering conducive to photo-taking. Chatting with other folks and the wine people and drinking and eating were more the order of the night. The food was nice. Could have done with more of each, though. Alain Brumont/Château Montus + Bouscassé has become known for promoting the continuing resuscitation and growth/use of an old grape varietal - Tannat. I liked the rosé - it was pleasant yet had character. Went well with the duck fat frites. I thought the Gascogne Blanc was pleasant enough but somewhat non-descript - to me, anyway. Salad was decent (they need to rip up those leaves, though). I enjoyed the Torus Madiran - I found it not too tannic, well balanced, good nose, tasted as described in the blurb. The foie gras torchon was good, but went well with either the raspberry sauce or the wine but not both at the same time for me, for some reason. The Château Montus was good too, but what sprang into my mind was that it reminded me of a less tannic version of a Hendry pinot noir I have...hmm. The Boeuf Borguignon entrée was fine but nothing that was earth-shattering. (but see cauliflower comment below) The Château Bouscassé was very good. Not cloying at all, and sweet dessert wines are not my favorite wines in the first place. Lovely aroma, complex, and balanced acid-sugar in it, for my taste. The pear tarte tatin was also excellent. They went swimmingly together. I haven't enjoyed a dessert (which I rarely eat) as much as I did here for quite a while. The couple across from me at the table had asked for and gotten a vegetarian menu instead, and their roasted cauliflower & lentils entrée some of which they shared with me was *quite* good. We all "demanded" of the staff that it be put on the regular menu. :-) I put in an order for some of the rosé, the Torus Madiran and the Château Bouscassé Petit Manseng. I had not been back to Petite Chou since they remodelled after the not-too-severe flooding in the immediate neighborhood a year or so ago (IIRC). I think I preferred the more-airy feel of the place before. The bistro is part of the Café Patachou empire, which all started with the original small place at 49th & N Pennsylvania not *that* long ago! I still remember eating some of their omelets and stuff at that original, sole, location and although it was good I did wonder why some folks (the local yuppies, mainly) thought it was GGTTW. NOTE: the original location was 2 shops up from the current location (now at the very corner) in that strip mall block on the NE corner of 49th & Penn.; and there was a florist shop next to it then too. 21st Amendment is a local chain of liquor & wine stores - pretty good places with wide selections varying in breadth and depth depending on the specific location. I usually get my alcohol from one or other of their locations. Location of Petite Chou on Google maps. P.s. GGTTW = God's gift to the world

Oh Yumm! Bistro is closed. The space is currently occupied by Byrne's Grilled Pizza.

Thanks, Chris Taylor. Appreciate the compliment.

In other words, you're playing games. Sorry, but your response sounds to me like you are "going fishing" and "baiting folks" here on eG - precisely because you are being so vague and cagey. I no longer know what it is that you are looking for, if it is in fact truly an authentic university project, or if you are maybe even someone (a marketer?) looking for a group of guinea pigs to flesh out some nebulous "marketing notion" or other "concept" of some sector or other of some yet-unknown demographic that may or may not involve people who cook or people who eat in whatever you call "fast food" places. IMO you do need to be more forthright about what it is you are trying to do. Are you a McDonald's person looking to see what sort of "new gourmet foodstuff" might appeal to an eG-like crowd in the US?

...and "Street Food" would also be "fast food" in many places, especially outside of the USA - and lots of very tasty food to be had too, and often cheaper than what it would cost if one were to make it at home. And they could be pretty nutritious too. :-) Lots of eG folks would seek out this type of "fast food" in, say, SE Asia. ;-) Even in the USA - what about Food Trucks? Taco trucks or carts? (Hot dog carts certainly are fast food vendors too) The abuelita selling wonderful cubanos or medianoches, say, from her cart? They all qualify as "fast food" too, even if they may not be quite "restaurants". Chinese Takeout places would qualify as "fast food restaurants", I would say.

I just took the survey too. I agree with gfweb's and Deryn's sentiment, regretfully. I selected "other" in many of your survey questions, in fact, so I could say "all of the above, depends on the circumstance and what I'm cooking" and variations thereof. But to answer your question above in your OP - in a nutshell, in my case I find it is the preparation of ingredients that is the most time consuming more often than not. In many cases the actual cooking is done very quickly. (and even with stews or braises the "active time" often still is the larger chunk of time taken; the time the dish takes to cook is very largely "unattended" time) I am not counting the time I spend on going around and buying groceries, true - that varies depending on how fancy I want my shopping trip to be. Depending on your target audience that may be a BIG factor for some folks. I think it would be helpful if you delineated better what your target audience is and what sort of "cooking" you have in mind. (presumably general Western-type/European cooking? And not other cuisines?)¶¶ What sort of kitchen/basic utensils do you expect your target audience to have? Many people "out there" eat fast food. Some more than others. Most folks here on eGullet tend not to do so, but (following on from Deryn's comments above) I imagine you must have realized that from browsing around here. (You have, right?) Are you targeting the proverbial "lower poorer working classes in urban USAmerican cities"? Living in areas characterized by some studies as those with no full-service groceries around? Or maybe not? Also, what do you mean by "fast food"¶¶? Folks with more disposable income also might eat a lot of "fast food", just maybe more pricey than simply McD's or Wendy's etc - like takeout from a gourmet store, or very fresh sushi-to-go (yes, there is such a thing) from various places, and so on. The choices available would also vary by urban/suburban/rural locale I would imagine.) ¶¶ ETA: Here's a useful quick reminder of your needing to specify what you mean by "fast food" and where and which cuisine. :-)

A noodle dish with stuff. Hot oil, chopped smashed garlic, minced rehydrated har mai (dried shrimp), sliced de-boned chicken thighs (premarinated w/ Shaohsing wine, fish sauce, wee bit light soy sauce, dash of oyster sauce, sesame oil, white pepper, corn starch) w/ marinade, de-skinned fuzzy squash cut into batons, chopped hot Thai chillies, pre-soaked glass noodles, water as needed, trimmed Thai basil, seasoning adjusted.

I've never tried it, but I wonder if blanching the basil in slightly alkaline water (plus the salt, I guess) might help, with keeping the green color at least. (I don't know about the taste retention). With "the usual vegetables" in E/SE Asian cooking that is a common way to keep them bright green, and it is also done in Western cooking, I believe, in addition to simply blanching them in salted water. But keep the citrus juice out till the end (like just before you use the sauce); acidic conditions *will* generally make green stuff go brown quickly. Under acidic conditions chlorophyll loses the Mg++ ion and becomes the olive/dark-colored pheophytin. Under alkaline conditions the chlorophyll retains the Mg++ and, at least partly, loses the phytyl & methyl esters (cleavage to the carboxylate moieties, becoming the Mg-chelated analog of chlorophyllin, which has a bright green color). P.s. the enzyme deactivated by the blanching is chlorophyllase.

Soup. Rice bran oil, medium heat; bit of chopped garlic, chicken stock, water, fresh wood-ear fungus (trimmed & rinsed), simmer; soft tofu chunks; then handfuls of fresh trimmed Thai basil (used like a vegetable) at the end. A sort of "roast duck dry-tossed noodles" (call it 燒鴨乾撈麵;** "siew ngap kon lo meen"), a rough-and-ready version. Store-bought Cantonese roast duck [from Asia mart], skinny wonton noodles [Twin Marquis] cooked in the usual manner then tossed/mixed with the duck sauce with the roast duck plus a little of the sauce mixture for the gai-lan (see below). Chopped scallions & coriander leaves. ** Jyutping: siu1 aap3 gon1 lou1 min6 Kai-lan w/ sauce. Trimmed kai-lan blanched in simmering oiled water (using the noodle-cooking water, which should now be slightly alkaline), drained, then dressed w/ a sauce made of {medium-hot oil, chopped smashed garlic, quenched w/ a mixture of (oyster sauce, dash of sesame oil, ground white pepper, hon-mirin, double-fermented soy sauce, water)}.

I would add this - Phillip a.k.a. Man-Bun got his lamb chops from that same Whole Foods, with which he won the EC. There have been comments about RIBS being an obvious meat offering. Maybe that Whole Food may not have had beef ribs, but surely pork spare ribs, on-the-bone-in-some-way meat, even whole chickens (rather than the ground-up chicken meat that went into Isaac's panned sausages) must have been available and in sufficient quantity for the challenge?

Haha. At the beginning of that LCK he (Tom C) did also say "no tweezers" or something like that - and the camera pans immediately to Chad plucking his tweezers out of his pocket and flinging it to the floor. Close-up of said tweezers lying on the floor. Heh.** ** And IIRC Chad WAS using his tweezers to place his microgreens stem-by-stem on his tuna slices - presumably the ones on the tray destined for the judges' table. :-D

Pig spleen google image set.

Here's the correct "casting call" for Top Chef Season 14: http://www.bravotv.com/the-daily-dish/top-chef-is-renewed-for-season-14-casting-call posted 1-and-a-half hours ago on the Bravo TC website. Yes, it has been renewed for another season.

Nice eG thread. Thanks for unearthing that! Great reading. Yes, the original started in New York. The Mitchell article is also linked to directly in the New Yorker archives in the Wikipedia article on the Beefsteak which I embedded in the words "BEEFSTEAK Dinner" in my post on this TC California episode. :-) ;-) Oh, I think it is all relevant to TC California, this episode, because it fills in the background for why it seemed odd that the cheftestants largely came up with what they did with a few exceptions. Some say that the EC wasn't properly explained to them, but I don't think that excuse holds water. Carl Dooley and Karen Akonowicz gave a more plausible explanation for why at least some of the cheftestants fell short - that they were limited by what they could get at Whole Food, a retail grocery, and at Whole Paycheck prices; rather than giving them access to a full-scale butcher &etc. http://www.bostonmagazine.com/restaurants/blog/2016/01/29/karen-akunowicz-carl-dooley-top-chef-recap-8/ Nevertheless, IMO many of them still could not let go of their fancy-fine-dining tendencies or, as you described it, their catering kitchen box thinking.

Here are some pictures from Beefsteak 4 in LA (Jan 24, 2015, at Vibiana): http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/cort-cass-attends-beefsteak-4-at-vibiana-cathedral-on-news-photo/462126932 Chicago also has its version of the Beefsteak Dinner. Website: http://thechicagobeefsteak.com/ 2014 pictures: http://thechicagobeefsteak.com/pictures/ 2015 pictures: http://thechicagobeefsteak.com/pictures2015/ Lots of alcohol and rowdy carousing all over and wherever. Dainty futzy fish slices with microgreens - nah. Lamb chops with bone handles - yah. SLABS of beef done this way, that way, all of which does show cooking skills when done well - definitely.

Couple of recaps from elsewhere: http://www.grubstreet.com/2016/01/top-chef-season-13-episode-8-recap.html http://www.eater.com/2016/1/29/10866706/top-chef-season-13-episode-8-jacques-la-merde

Here's what the L.A. Beefsteak Dinner 2013 was like. They had heaping platters of salmon, and according to the author of the article he still had bits of it in his beard afterwards. :-)

TC California ep 8. Best quote: "People who say we eat with our eyes first should be stabbed with a pork chop bone." Thank you, Isaac Toups. Having a QF where plating (in the Western idiom) is glorified like that was...sad. For me, anyway. Nevertheless, I thought Carl Dooley should have won, if that was the challenge. The EC - BEEFSTEAK Dinner, chefs. I was puzzled by the cheftestants' choices, for the most part. Although Man-Bun is still as obnoxious as ever, he did deserve the win - if not anything else because he put out something that was tasty, well cooked, and fit the challenge. Which *had* been explained to them - no plates, eating with hands, no utensils, BEEFSTEAK DINNER, big hunks of meat (OK, plus fish, they were told to do that). NO MICRO GREENS nor tweezer food should have been obvious, and except for Carl no-one served beef? I guess either most of them had never heard of this dinner, or was unable to grasp the concept of ripping off hunks of meat with bare hands, or could not get away from being "Dainty-Fine-Dining-Cheffy-like". Kwame's shrimp - too salty, too mealy -- according to the judges -- and, perhaps, even though it was certainly eat-with-your-hands-food, perhaps just a little too fiddly? At least for those people? As for whether Isaac or Chad White should have gone home, for myself it was a toss-up. Isaac's sausage fit the bare-hands-etc parameters better, but tasted not so good; Chad's tuna with microgreens failed the parameters but tasted good...hmm. Eh, I'm OK with Isaac staying if not anything else because of the great quote he uttered in the QF. :-D The judges were sloshed, it seemed. Borderline obnoxious even. Ditto some of the guests, with lots of bro-ing going on, and the co-founder of the event and Tom Hanks' son laid it on a bit thick, perhaps. Hugh Acheson THROWING FOOD through the air - hey, they should have had a food fight as well. :-) LCK - Chad gets a chance to re-do a dish that fit the parameters of the BEEFSTEAK Dinner. So he gets the head and cuts out the tongue, cheeks, eyeballs, etc ... and makes a burger. (Plus those cheeks) Jason puts out a HUNK of meat, nicely done, nicely accompanied. Yes, his win was deserved. P.s.: There was a somewhat unseemly aspect of it - that the event was dedicated to gluttony while supposedly being a benefit for food-needy folks. Ah, A-List Beautiful People and Marie Antoinette and cake.

Liver, onions, spuds. Plus the tasty scrapings and bits from the pan. :-)

Friday 2016-01-29. Asia mart: Rice bran oil; "Little Cook" Pork & Mustard Noodle Bowls; Singapore Chili Crab Lamian 4-pack; "Little Cook" Mushroom & Vegetable Noodle Bowls; "Sapporo Ichiban" Chicken Noodle packs; canned vegetarian mock abalone; pickled/sour mustard packs (2 brands); "pickled cabbage" (雪菜) packs; chillied "preserved vegetable (mustard heads) (榨菜) packs; bag of shallots; fresh soft tofu, fresh firm tofu; Chinese roast duck (half a duck, chopped up); Chinese crullers (油炸鬼); fresh "rice shrimp roll" (豬腸粉); boneless beef shanks/shins; a 3-lb one-piece slab of pork belly; fresh Ya Pears ("yali pears"); fresh galangal, fresh ginger, fresh woodear mushrooms; deep-fried tofu puffs ("tau pok"); frozen fish balls, frozen beef & tendon balls, frozen fish tofu cubes; garlic heads; fresh vegetables: bitter melon, fuzzy squash, persian cucumbers, Thai basil, Vietnamese mint, Vietnamese "coriander", scallions, normal coriander leaves, small/baby kai choy, kai-lan, green daikon, lotus roots, Chinese chives; fresh limes. Viet Hua Food Market: Thai red chillies; scallions; fresh winter bamboo shoots; striped bass - from the tanks, killed & gutted; short-cut pork spare ribs. ------------------------ Saturday 2016-0130. Claus' German Sausage & Meats: Coarse Braunschweiger; pressed tongue; fresh calf liver thick slices; jarred Hengstenberg Sauerkraut. Amelia's bakery: Francese loaf. Goose the Market: La Quercia Prosciutto Rossa; cheeses: Vacherousse d'Argental, Cato Dutch Farmstead, Moulis de Brebis.

Some meals. ------------------------------------------- Couple of charcuterie plates. Coarse Braunschweiger, pressed tongue [both from Claus']; Francese loaf slices [Amelia's]; sliced Persian cucumbers. (I had a hankering for Braunschweiger...so took a drive down to Claus' and picked up some other stuff along the way back at Amelia's and Goose the Market. ) Prosciutto Rossa [La Quercia stuff, via Goose the Market], more Francese bread & Persian cucumbers. Lotus root soup. Water, short-cut pork spare ribs, bit of rice bran oil, the stuff shown in the picture below, sliced scrubbed fresh lotus root, a couple of honey jujubes (like these), sea salt, simmer till done. Note to the curious: there is no soy sauce of any type added to it, either while cooking it or afterwards. Some of the stuff that went into the lotus root soup: Center: sliced dried angular Solomon's Seal rhizome (玉竹; Polygonatum odoratum). Clockwise from 7 o'clock: "Southern Jujubes" (南棗), a large, dark-colored form of dried Chinese jujubes; dried small whole cuttlefish (小墨魚幹); (raw shelled) unskinned peanuts (帶皮花生); dried wolfberry fruits (枸杞子; goji berries).

Earlier – Chicken & cabbage soup. With coriander leaves & halved tau pok added in. Plus Fuzhou wheat vermicelli (福州綫麵) softened into the bowl of soup after cooking. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Later – Cantonese-style steamed striped bass (廣式蒸鱸魚). The fish was alive a few hours prior. With ong choy (蕹菜; water spinach; Ipomoea aquatica) stir-fried w/ garlic & fu yee (腐乳; fermented bean curd). Eaten w/ several bowls of white rice.