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cdh

eGullet Society staff emeritus
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Everything posted by cdh

  1. cdh

    Purslane a-plenty

    Thanks so much everybody! I'm feeling some inspiration now. As promised, here's a picture of part of the purslane patch:
  2. cdh

    Purslane a-plenty

    I'm looking for some inspiration on what to do with this succulent weed that has been spreading throughout my garden like wildfire. I know that I could use it in salads as a green, or mix it in with cubed cucumbers and tomatos... What else is there to do with it? It's got a bit of leafy crunch like mache does, but has a brighter flavor... sort of like less sour sorrel in a mache like form... Maybe I'll go snap a picture so that people know what I'm talking about and edit it into the post in a bit.
  3. Fine. You win. All animals are likely to be full of deadly stuff that can kill me, and always have been and always will be. No changes in agriculture will make any difference. Bacteria that have survived generations of anti-biotic onslaught are no more hardy or infectious than they would have been without that selective factor in their environment. But food television should not harp on it.
  4. Back to the point of this thread-- What exactly should a TV chef be forced to do repeatedly on camera by way of demonstrating compliance with sanitary standards? Should there be a closeup of a good 30 second hand scrub every time uncooked poultry appears? How about just a conspicuous donning of latex gloves... <*snap* ... *snap*> like the old standard shot before a TV surgeon goes into the operating room? Should all food television kitchen sets standardize on a set of colored cutting boards and knives so that the viewers can be assured that the chef is cutting the right item on the right surface with the right knife? Should there be a monologue about the importance of preventing cross-contamination every time one of these actions takes place? There won't be much in the way of cooking television produced if these rules are enforced. The food sanitation problems come from the indiscriminate use of antibiotics in raising animals, and the vile condition factory farmed animals live in. Those actions are directly attributable to a certain industry, and that industry pays for none of the havoc its policies demonstrably wreak. Is that right? Why, exactly, should TV chefs have to cut into their 22 minutes of instruction time to right the wrongs caused by an identifiable party who is not paying for them for that service?
  5. Fine research... I'm sure that sanitation, vaccines, anasthesia, subdued Huns, Gauls, Ostrogoths and Visigoths, antibiotics, prenatal care, lead-free pipes, and the fact that garum is out of fashion all contribute to modern longevity. However you've entirely missed the point- Why should the burden of defusing the biotoxic bombs that agribusiness deploys to every supermarket in the country fall on TV chefs? Whaddaya bet that the chickens that they use on the TV shows are free range, disease free boutique beasts specially raised for the chef? If I were negotiating a media contract for a TV chef, I'd damn well stick that in as a condition of employment... no way I'd want them to have to deal with toxic chicken when there are minimally costlier alternatives that have a significantly lesser chance of infecting them or passers-by with noxious microfauna.
  6. What do you mean by sake-tini? I'd agree that the whole -tini naming thing is a crime against language, but not necessarily against the booze. I've seen two variations on the sake cocktail concept- A gin or vodka base with sake used in place of the vermouth... which, when garnished with a cucumber, is quite nice, and is really not that far from a real martini (if you believe in the authenticity of vodka martinis.) Coming up with a proper name for this shouldn't be so hard-- Call it a Geisha's Whisper, or a Zen or a Silver Moon... anything but a goddam sake-tini. Then there are the sake + liqueur drinks and the sake and fruit juice drinks which are also called sake-tinis, which are nothing like martinis and really shouldn't be called sake-tinis because not only is the name stupid, but it is also misleading since sake+stuff bears no resemblance to a real martini. Problem of the -tini phenomenon is that -tini does at least carry some information insofar as it implies a strong drink in an inverted conic glass... No standard method of divining what a creatively named cocktail's like unless you order one... at least you have some small fraction of a clue when you order something called a x-tini.
  7. Never had any of them... A very PNW selection... What drew you to them?
  8. Putting my legal background to work I perused the PA Code of Regulations and found a few mentions of thymus glands and other such, but none of which made any attempts to outlaw them.. so I don't think there's a law against them*. It may just be a real lack of demand that keeps them off the shelves. Clamor for sweetbreads all! Let them know we're here and we want our sweetbreads! * Which is not to say that some other law has not been interpreted to cover them while not specifically mentioning them, a possibility no lawyer could discount.
  9. Excellent! I look forward to hearing the results of your sleuthing. Would be interesting to see if a consistent story emerges across all the folks who are asked.
  10. Actually, have you seen sweetbreads on the menu in PHL anywhere? I know that the only memorable sweetbreads I've consumed in restaurants were in NYC... La Caravelle did them wonderfully, as does Prune... But I don't recall seeing them in PA ever. Makes me wonder if there is some regulation in PA that declares the offal bits "unfit for human consumption" for some silly reason or other. I could get sweetbreads in ordinary supermakets in Texas... I've picked up lamb kidneys at Wegman's in Allentown before... but never seen a sweetbread in PA. Maybe we have a grass-roots political issue here-- "Free the Sweetbreads!"
  11. Oh please.... People survived thousands of years of cookery without the benefit of even the germ theory of disease (though did not have antibiotic fuelled superbugs living in their poultry either, to be fair). The marginal increase in risk to anybody caused by licking a spoon is negligable. It's sad enough that modern agriculture has turned food products into biohazards. Now do we consumers need to be beaten over the head with the fact that our food supply is noxious and toxic? Sure we do, because it is the case... but cooking on TV is as much about the fantasy that such were not the case as it is about the actual procedure. Antibiotic crazed agribusiness should have to fund a ubiquitous public service announcement campaign warning of the dangers caused by their practices... The duty and the blame should not be shifted to TV chefs or anybody else. This is called internalizing the externality in economic speak. Time to advocate its adoption more broadly...
  12. Randomly asked a farmer today if, since they sell lots of lamb parts, could they get me some lamb sweetbreads. They were puzzled and said they never see them from their butcher, and wondered if there was some law that prevented it. I've never seen sweetbreads available at any consumer market in PA... maybe this is just a function of the limited sample size of my life experience, but there might be something to it. Has anybody who's not a chef ever bought sweetbreads in PA? How does one qualify to buy them if there is some law restricting access?
  13. Be careful in your terminology-- there are two Yuengling products with "Light" in their names-- the "Light Lager" of which I'm speaking, and the "Premium Light", which, a year or more ago when I tried it, struck me as watery and pretty bad. The good thing about the Light Lager was that it was only slightly lightened, and retained a lot of good beer characteristics. It worked as a great counterpoint beer when one of my homebrews wasn't what I felt like drinking. Maybe all this is just a relative perception thing with me, since I've been drinking my way through a batch of homebrewed Trippel style beer this spring, and last year I was drinkning homebrewed Wit. Maybe the much richer and heavier beer outshines its counterpoint beer this year. But I still would like to think that it was a better beer that has slid downhill...
  14. Just picked up a case of Yuengling Light Lager, which despite the "light" in its name, used to be a pretty good beer. This stuff that I brought home yesterday would have trouble standing up to seltzer water. The beer used to have both a good hop profile and a bit of malt character. Both are missing in this case... as is some of the carbonation I'd remembered... this is like a two-day-open seltzer bottle. Am I imagining things (like it was ever good), or did this beer really slide over the past year?
  15. Tea served with a bunch of 1cm diameter tapioca balls in the bottom of the cup. Sipped through a straw big enough for the balls to get sucked up along with the tea. Some eat them. I prefer to view them as ammunition, and the straw as a blowgun. Perfect for when you've got a to-go cup and are wandering the streets. It's a drink that comes with a game attached. I don't see the appeal of the stuff in a cafe setting. Though shops that do bubble tea often do drinks with chunks of immature coconut jelly in them too, and that is good eating in a fruity tea context.
  16. cdh

    beer and cream

    Try hitting it with a hand blender... maybe lack of clumps will make it taste better. The sweet to sour balance sounds a bit better, but maybe a spoon of brown sugar would help it out if it is still too tart.
  17. Well... this is not exactly about grapefruit juice, but I've been drinking quite a few of Paul Harrington's Jasmines lately, and despite the fact they contain no grapefruit juice, they are a dead ringer for its flavor. Do you squeeze your own juice, have a store that makes its own good squeezed juices, or are you at the mercy of Tropicana and Ocean Spray in your choice of grapefruit juice sources? Big difference between a splash of Ocean Spray Ruby Red Grapefruit Juice Flavored Drink, and a squeeze of the real thing. Both probably have their places in mixology... but I'm quite content to shake up Jasmines and drink my ersatz GFJ flavored cocktails.
  18. cdh

    beer and cream

    But boba are more like ammunition than food... bubble tea is a drink that comes with a game attached... big straw + boba == blowgun Watch out, inviting targets!
  19. cdh

    beer and cream

    Beer + ice cream is not unheard of... pretty tasty too. Porter milkshakes, anyone? But sour cream + stout does sound a little bit on the acidic side. Is ukranian stout sourish, or sweetish? And how well was your friend's concoction blended together. Nothing says unappetizing like lumps in your beverage.
  20. Well... samovars don't make tea as such... they keep water hot. Generally a little pot of very concentrated tea sits on top of the samovar and you splash a little of it into your cup and top up with the hot water from the spiggot on the samovar. A bit of etymological trivia: samovar comes from the russian words for self (sam) and boil (varit')...
  21. And if it is really a high quality oolong, then expect to be able to get at least 4 or 5 infusions out of each dosage of leaves... don't throw them away after just one steeping (which should only be around 2 minutes). All this is predicated on your making it in a little pot and pouring all the tea off the leaves after each steep is done. Don't know how it would turn out if made in a big pot and the leaves were left to slosh around in the tea as you drank your way through the pot.
  22. OK. I think orange juice sucks... mostly. Judging by shelf space in the refrigerated section of all the supermarkets, it looks to me like people just love orange juice. Mostly the horrible crappy industrial OJ that fills the entirety of those refrigerators. Now I'll not go so far as to say I hate all OJ... fresh squeezed, and I mean the really fresh squeezed stuff, not the pasturized industrial stuff that never got concentrated and rehydrated, is good. Tropicana, Minute Maid, Florida's Natural, all the big branded crap on the shelves is just no good. It is all too sweet and not tangy enough. Probably has something to do with the blend of varietals of oranges they use...
  23. Not England, I don't think. Wasn't she in either California or France in all of her writings? I think cooking wolves was about wartime rationing in the US... we didi that here too...
  24. This sounds like a game of remote refrigerator roulette. Which brings to mind the thought of throwing something like a rent party, but instead of collecting cash at the door to pay the band, ask everybody to bring an ingredient of their choice, and put your culinary skills to work (you're an egulleter, after all) to make vast quantities of something out of the collected ingredients. Feed everybody, and you, as host, get to keep the leftovers.
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