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JAZ

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Everything posted by JAZ

  1. Doc, I think she is saying that -- she comes down on Pillsbury biscuits, pre-washed romaine hearts and flavored rice mixes. She's the one who brought up preparing raw ingredients and cooking from "scratch." But your apology for her is kind of my point. I mean, I'm all for families eating dinner together, and I'm all for families (and the rest of us) eating -- and cooking -- healthier food. But Hesser seems to demand more. It's not enough for Mom or Dad to come home from an 8+hour day and boil pasta, heat jarred sauce and make a salad, even if the family sits down and eats together. If it's not "raw ingredients," it doesn't count. I wish that, just for once, someone would say that we don't have to be perfect, that it doesn't have to be all or nothing. That is, whatever moves -- however minor -- we can make to eat better, learn more about where our food comes from and cook with our families are worth striving for. If it means making Hamburger Helper and a salad from pre-washed romaine hearts and sitting down together at the table instead of bringing home KFC to be eaten whenever the kids happen to get home, then hey! don't disparage that behavior, encourage it. Maybe it will lead to more cooking and "better" ingredients -- and even if it doesn't, well, at least the family's eating dinner together, right?
  2. I think this is, again, nitpicky. We all have a pretty good idea what real cooking is and none of us (to agree with the good doctor above) minds a little prepared food as long as the general thrust is more or less away from microwaved TV dinners or whatever KFC is trying to force on us these days. And, as someone who has served their kids macaroni and cheese many times, I can assure that it is indeed not real cooking. ← I don't agree that this is nitpicky. Since "we all have a pretty good idea what real cooking is," maybe you can give me some guidance on the following examples: Cake from a cake mix Tuna casserole made with canned cream of mushroom soup Tacos made with ground beef and Lawry's Taco Seasoning, chopped fresh onions, tomatoes and lettuce, and bottled taco sauce Betty Crocker boxed "Au Gratin" potatoes Green salad with bottled salad dressing Grilled cheese sandwiches with Campbell's tomato soup These are all things my mother made for us while I was growing up in the 60's and 70's, along with pot roast, fried chicken, homemade macaroni and cheese, and all kinds of other dishes "from scratch." She was a great cook, but I don't doubt for a second that she was very happy to be able to use those and other shortcuts. So, tell me: what counts as "real cooking"? From Hesser's comments, I can't see that any of those dishes would make her cut.
  3. One thing in Hesser's piece that I object to is her assertion that she knows what counts as "real" cooking (hence her derision of "mix-and-eat macaroni and cheese, rice with mix-in flavor pouches and instant pudding"). What makes her the arbiter of what counts as "cooking"? Suppose I told her that she doesn't really "cook" because she doesn't grind her own flour or cure her own sausage, or because she buys bread baked by someone else or beer that she didn't brew herself? I assume she'd object -- just like I object to her telling me I shouldn't buy pre-washed romaine hearts.
  4. And yet, Hesser seems certain that it is evil: It's clear that only food prepared with raw ingredients counts as "cooking" for Ms Hesser. Picking something up on the way home, no matter how nutritious or delicious, wouldn't satisfy her.
  5. That is the best question to ask, certainly. I think what happens is that waiters feel that they shouldn't be predictable or boring, so they try to be creative, when "creative" isn't really desirable. I was at a very casual bar and grill kind of place recently, where the server said: "Everything is delicious. . ." as if it were a statement of fact, and then caught himself and tacked on ". . .y'all?" to turn it into a question. It was really odd. On the other hand, I'm sympathetic. I've never waited tables, but I have worked in retail, and there are similarities. You want the customers to know that you're around to answer questions or help, but there are only so many ways you can say that. I personally always stuck with the tried and true -- "Can I help you find anything?" "Do you have any questions?" -- but I've worked with people who wanted to be more personal and always managed to come up with something awful. So having been there, I guess I just take it in stride and assume that the desire is to be helpful. A verbally clueless server who checks in on the table might be annoying, but he or she is still better than one who disappears for the whole meal.
  6. There are so many questionable statements in Hesser's op-ed it's hard to know where to start. The most obvious, perhaps is what the blog Eat Me Daily points out: More fundamental that that, though is the question of just why Mom cooking dinner from scratch is such a necessity of life these days. Certainly there was a time when there wasn't a choice, but please: do we really want to return to those days? There was also a time when Mom sewed all the family's clothes, and no one would ever say that we should return to that model. What makes Mom cooking from scratch so different from her making our clothes? I love to cook, so for me it's not a chore, but I hardly expect everyone else to share my passions. It's as if someone who builds furniture were to tell me that my life and my family's life isn't complete if I buy from Rooms to Go.
  7. JAZ

    Melon Ballers

    I used to use mine for these two tasks until I got a couple of the teaspoon-sized scoops like these. Much easier to get the dough or filling to release.
  8. The ones you link to are packed in brandy -- the Amarana Fabbri linked to in the first post are in heavy syrup -- no alcohol. So that's going to make a difference.
  9. JAZ

    Recipes That Rock: 2009

    I'm not sure about frozen, but the original (as far as I know) recipe from Fine Cooking magazine (here), which has a slightly different prep method, specifically says you can start them up to eight hours ahead of time. I'd think you could certainly start them a day ahead of time. The one time I tried them, I had serious problems with sticking, but I assume I just didn't use enough oil. They were still very good.
  10. Depending on what you're cooking, a pressure cooker will cut 1/3 to 1/2 of the cooking time. I recently braised some "country ribs" (aka thick strips of pork shoulder) for chile verde; once the cooker came up to pressure, I cooked them for about an hour and had meat that practically shredded itself. About the same time for short ribs; 20 minutes for chicken thighs and the meat falls off the bone. In addition to the time savings, pressure cooking means that you don't have to keep the oven on for several hours -- you have one burner on for half to a third of the time, which keeps the kitchen cooler.
  11. Last summer, I made a shortcake using blueberries and a combination of whipped cream with lemon curd folded in. You couldn't do the whipped cream way in advance, but it holds pretty well for a couple of hours.
  12. The reason for using foil, as I've read, is so that you can lift the whole batch of brownies out of the pan after they've cooled. That way that they're easier to cut and (obviously) to get out of the pan without crumbling. You could probably make it work with parchment, but foil has the advantage of being more malleable, so that you can fit it into the corners of the pan. The recipes I've read that use this method call for lining the pan with a piece that's big enough to extend over the edges of the pan by a few inches, which gives you something to hang onto when you're lifting them out of the pan. I've done this and it works really well, although now I just use a silicone pan.
  13. I never dredge meat in flour, regardless of how I braise. But yes, I proceed just the same way I would if I were braising in a Dutch oven, so usually that means I brown first, then add the liquid, then lock the lid into place and cook.
  14. Restaurant Eugene has a new menu -- as you can read here in an AJC article by John Kessler. Eugene's chef, Linton Hopkins, has changed to a much longer list of small plates exclusively: I tried a couple of the new dishes at the bar and was impressed. I've been frequenting Holeman and Finch much more than Eugene precisely because I like smaller plates, but now I'm looking forward to trying more of the options at Eugene.
  15. I've switched almost exclusively to my pressure cooker when braising. The main difference I've found is that the cooking liquid doesn't evaporate at all in the pressure cooker, so I usually have to reduce my sauce more. Other than that, I really can't tell any difference.
  16. Something that just occurred to me is that we used to have this on Fridays, back in the days when Catholics were supposed to abstain from meat on that day. We kids weren't big fish fans back then, so it was probably a good alternative for my Mom.
  17. Years ago, my sister used to buy "Coronitas" -- Corona beer in smaller bottles -- 7 or 8 ounces, as I recall. I was never a fan of Corona, and at the time the idea struck me as a marketing gimmick. Now, however, I often find myself wanting just a small beer; 12 ounces is too much, and I either have to waste 4 or 5 ounces or find some way to cook with it. (Actually, come to think of it, my parents often used to split a beer before dinner. At the time, I thought it was cheap; now I think it's great. If I had someone to split a beer with, it would save a lot of beer.) So, two questions: do any decent breweries bottle beer in anything smaller than 12 ounces? And if not, why not?
  18. While I agree that the Torpedo is worth trying, it wasn't life altering. It's not even the best of Sierra Nevada's beers (which I like); I thought their ESB (Early Spring Beer) was better balanced and more interesting. But it's good to have another option when I'm in the mood for lots of hops.
  19. Until about three years ago, I lived my entire life in the Western US. Growing up, we ate macaroni and cheese fairly often, and always as a main course. My friends' mothers served it as a main course. When I went to college, the dining hall served macaroni and cheese as a main course (for lunch, not dinner -- but still as a main course). Imagine my surprise when I moved to Atlanta, where macaroni and cheese is treated as a side dish. On the one hand, I guess I can understand that -- it's a starch; there's no meat in it; you could look at it as a pasta version of cheesy mashed potatoes. On the other hand, it's impossible for me to forget my past. I still think of it as a main course. I suppose I'm more inclined to accept a stovetop version as a side dish, but once you put it into a gratin dish and bake it, I go back to my original view. Is this a geographical difference? Cultural? Is it only a Southern thing? Is there a difference between "main course" and "side dish" macaroni and cheese?
  20. Just because some of us don't think the future "path" that Alice Waters endorses is viable, it doesn't follow that we think the one we've been following is correct. Those aren't the only two options.
  21. Except that I know many chefs who don't like vegetables in their meat stocks. Parsley stems would be fine for an herb sauce and maybe a vegetable stock, but why should a chef who doesn't like the flavor use them in a dish where he or she thinks they don't belong? It would be like using the leftover beets scraps from a brunoise in carrot soup, just in order not to waste them. I think cutting down on waste is a great thing, but I don't think you can expect chefs to use any old leftovers in menu items. It's great if a restaurant can feed them to pigs or chickens, but let's face it: not many restaurants have that ability. Compost sounds like a reasonable alternative.
  22. Cocktails with Cointreau or curacao and lemon juice often taste to me like they have orange juice -- for instance, the Journalist: 2 oz. gin .25 oz. Curacao .25 oz. lemon juice .5 oz. sweet vermouth .5 oz. dry vermouth Dash Angostura bitters The first time I tasted this, I thought "Wow, a Bronx cocktail that I actually like!" It's got something of the flavor profile of orange juice, but without the heavy mouthfeel and cloying quality of orange juice itself.
  23. JAZ

    Liquid diet

    I make pureed vegetable soups from just about anything -- carrots, asparagus, broccoli, artichokes red peppers, corn -- using the same basic formula. Start out with a cup or so of onions, leeks or shallots, sliced. Saute them in butter or oil until soft. Add about a pound of your vegetable of choice, salt and half a cup of white wine or sherry. Cook until wine has mostly evaporated, then add three to four cups of chicken stock or water (depending on how concentrated you want it) and simmer until vegetables are very soft. Puree (in batches if necessary) and put through a strainer, then add half a cup of cream and adjust seasoning.
  24. That would be my question, too. Did you develop them so your customers can buy them and take them home to heat up in the toaster? If not, I guess I'm missing the point.
  25. I'm actually happy with my home kitchen now; my last kitchen, though, had the worst gas range ever. Not only was the broiler on the bottom, but there was no drawer to pull out, so to use it, I pretty much had to lie on the floor and try to place the food under the ring of flame without burning my arms. And the burners were crap -- no way to keep a low flame at all. Give me electric any day. Where I teach, the worst thing -- even worse than the expensive yet awful Wolf and Viking ranges -- are the Viking wall ovens, which are half an inch too narrow to accommodate a half-sheet pan. How stupid is that?
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