wokkingtall
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Posts posted by wokkingtall
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Very cool. Thank you for sharing ChefMD.
Question: In the first set of pics, specifically the last picture - after the Burger King, with the sign that says "You will never drink alone" - ... what kind of food are they selling...?
Just as an aside, some of the comments remind me of how lucky I am to have been born and raised in Canada (Thanks Mom and Dad!). It's hard to imagine (at least for me) supermarkets with bare shelves and food stores with armed guards. Talking and debating about food, is indeed, a luxury.
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Apparently In-N-Out Burger had a 1-day pop up in Toronto yesterday (Thursday).
From the Toronto Star: http://www.thestar.com/life/food_wine/2014/09/11/innout_burger_popup_shop_was_it_worth_the_wait.html
I've never been - the closest I got was in Vega$, but I never made it there
Did anyone manage to get in...?
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There are some heirloom red globe tomatoes showcased here.. http://www.victoryseeds.com/tomato_red.html ...there are many many others still around as well.....with "new" ones being discovered and introduced to the general public every year.
After a quick look at the link.... I can definitely say to this untrained eye, there are heirloom varieties that look just like a field tomato. Enough for me to definitely give the vendor the benefit of the doubt....
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Hi DDF,
Depends on how you define "heirloom".
There are dozens and dozens of older tomato cultivars that are red globes, but it's impossible to know exactly what you really have.
Heirloom or not, a buck a tomato is pretty steep pricing, IMHO....for tomatoes that size anyway.
Hm. I would have to plead ignorance on the definition of "heirloom" then. Simplistically, (at least for me) I would define heirloom as a (lineage?) of fruit or vegetable that has been bred in such a manner as to enhance characteristics of sweetness, colour...etc.
RE: $1 / tomato... this is why I wanted to know if what I had purchased was indeed what I was supposed to have purchased. For what it's worth, at this particular market, the heirloom tomato prices were, if I recall correctly:
$6 for the basket we are referring to in this post
$8 for a slightly larger basket... not sure how many were in it
$8 a pound for loose, pick your own
Your point is well taken though. I was quite aware that this would be a difficult question to answer definitively. I decided to try anyways...
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Hi All,
This afternoon I was at one of my cities' major outdoor markets. One of the vendors was selling containers of heirloom tomatoes. Price was $6 (Canadian) for the container. 6 tomatoes... so a buck a tomato.
Upon further inspection later at home, I thought one of the heirlooms...well...didn't look so "heirloom-y". It looked closer to a regular old field tomato rather than an heirloom.
Can anyone tell if indeed, the vendor slipped in a non-heirloom variety into my container...? In the picture, the tomato in question is directly above the yellow one (top left corner).
Oddly enough, it might have been the best of the bunch. Doh!
(Apologies in advance if the pics are uploaded wrong...I've never attached pics to a post before)
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There is a very large segment of the population in North America that are willing to pay whatever they have to pay to avoid having to cook. There is a significant percentage of that segment that are willing to pay $10+ for salads. Not even fancy, exotic salads... just salads. Chef's, Caesar, etc. If a person could open a restaurant in an area with the right population to be able to sell nothing but salads and make a go of it, their profit margins would be huge.
It already exists (at least where I am).... Mind you "Chop Crazy" also sells smoothies and sandwiches, but from what I've seen, most people get the build-your-own salad option.
www.chopcrazy.com
You can Google for pics of the place, if interested. They're mostly in shopping mall food courts.
Joking aside though, re: food costs. I would have thought since salad fixins are highly perishable and the making them somewhat labour intensive, this would drive up food costs (and therefore price). The immediate example that comes to my mind is fish - restaurants pay for the whole thing, but after trimming and boning you've driven the price of that item up drastically. No one likes to eat limp, brown lettuce after all....
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Another vote here for curried goat, particularly the Carribean style(s). My first choice for a roti filling.
My girlfriend, a picky eater if there ever was one, LOVES curried goat roti. How I ever got her to try one, I'll never know....but I'm glad she did.
My go-to Asian grocery store carries frozen goat in their butcher counter. They never have shoulder or the like, which I'm guessing would be best for the curried form. Too bad - I'd like to take a crack at making it...
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Very cool twist to the food blogs..! Kudos to your son for having a good outlook on trying new and different foods when travelling abroad.
If you ever have the time, it would be cool to hear a bit about Russian food in a different thread.
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My father (and others of his generation in my family) makes a similar kow yuk dish. Instead of the preserved vegetable that you have, he (they) use thick-ish slices of taro. Occasionally, it might be potato.
In my family's case, we would only get this for occasions such as Christmas. My father would tell us how much work was required. In his case, it usually took him 2-3 days. I can see why now.
For me, it was a slightly acquired taste when I was younger. I now enjoy it immensely... more so, perhaps because there will be fewer Christmases left to have it...
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Hi huiray,
Your pork belly dish (above) looks fantastic . I am wondering though...when you have it under the broiler to crisp the skin, what is the smoke factor like...? Your recipe looks like something I'd want to try, but am afraid of triggering any and all the smoke alarms in my apartment. ( I don't have a range hood, unfortunately...)
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Shawarma sandwiches (which are wraps, by the way - Arabic bread is never used as a "pocket" from what I've seen) are also typically not served with greens and tomatoes, as falafel is, but rather just with some pickles and maybe hummus, not much else. I would up the pickle quotient, add some tomatoes, and maybe use a sauce that wasn't hummus. It may not be authentic, but I think it'd yield a tastier, less dry overall product - lately I've gone off "authentic" shawarma, the last several times I've had it in Lebanon I've been underwhelmed.
More than bagels and (possibly) smoked meat, I would probably miss a good chicken shawarma (or shish taouq as I mentioned upthread) sandwich if I ever moved from Montreal. Thanks to a large population of French-speaking Middle Easterners, there is a plethora of places to find shish taouq here - some better than others...
In general though, sandwiches here are not pockets either, but wraps. If you asked for everything on it (all dressed), you would get: lettuce, tomatoes, pickled turnips, hummus and/or a very garlicky mayonnaise. Some places might do coleslaw (non-creamy) in place of the lettuce. Others do dill pickles instead of the turnips. Some put the sandwich into a panini press after wrapping, some don't.
All this to say that the end product is certainly not dry....and it sounds like it's also not 100% authentic either...!
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You could try dredging in Trisol.
Or double cook the chicken. Steam it first so the outside gets very moist, cool, then dredge in flour then cook.
There's a whole cook-off thread on fried chicken on eGullet. Many very experienced deep fryers contributed to that thread. Without seeing what you do it is impossible to work out what you are doing wrong. There have already been some great suggestions here. Buy some chicken, try them out, and let us know what worked for you.
I second checking out the fried chicken cook-off thread. There are many pictures there from many attempts. Some even are oven baking. Maybe one of them resembles what happens with your efforts...
My life has been much happier for finding ChefCrash's recipe in there. It has become my go-to method for all kinds of deep fried goodness.
Good luck!
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Shawarma is different from Doner Kebabs. Both in type of meat, meat prep and seasoning.
Although the world at large seems to agree on allegedly Shawarma being of Turkish origin with the word "çevirme"which means turning.
I disagree with the origin and appellation as it sounds as a phonetic creation of "çevirme" spelled as Shawarma.
My take on it is that Shawarma is Levantine in origin and the name Shawarma is composed of two distinct words namely "Shawa" which means to grill on open fire and Kawarma which is a type of preserved meat in the Levant.
Hence Shawa + Kawarma became Shawarma.....but please feel free to disagree and go with the alleged Turkish version.
Now to the meat. The original recipe for Shawarma calls for Lamb meat + Lamb fat. You have to note that the Levant type of Lamb indigenous to countries like Syrian (as a side note, there was no Shawarma in Syria prior mid 70's), the Lamb have a Fat TAIL which is different from the other type of Lamb. And this is what moistens and adds taste and flavor to the meat.
As far as I am concerned, Shawarma is of Lebanese origin and the best of the best would be Abu Khodr and lately Barbar in Beirut.
Shawarma is cut meat + fat. Originally Lamb and now Beef. (There was no significant number of "beef" cattle in the Levant or Turkey where Lamb and Goat exist in higher number. As Shawarma is street food of relatively modest price, originally Lamb would be used and not Beef).
Doner is ground meat.
The seasoning is also different and Shawarma main spice is Cardamon and the marinate is Vinegar based. Not so with Doner.
There was not any Doner or Shawarma stands in the streets of Turkey, this came much later and adopted in Turkey as "traditional" street food!
Similar story for Falafel....etc
Shawarma as with all other food, is taking new roads and the Chicken versions started multiplying.
Here are two versions of Chicken. One is called Lebanese Chicken Shawarma and the red one is called Mexican Shawarma......go figure....
Separately, the Chicken so called original version is pounded chicken meat.......and the latest twist is Prawns Shawarma....the world moves in mysterious ways!
This is quite an elaborate subject, so I think I stop here but will answer any of your direct queries.
Interesting...
Could "Lebanese Chicken Shawarma" also be known as "Shish-Taouk"...? I've often wondered what the difference was, if any. Here in Montreal, that's what you would ask for if you wanted chicken. If you ordered Shawarma, you would be getting beef.
Everywhere else I've been (ie, outside of Montreal) just calls it Chicken Shawarma or Beef Shawarma.
I'd be interested to know where the term shish taouk originated from (if anyone knows)
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But other than that, it's been another boring week. I really need a banquet for 5,000 to get the blood pumping....
This was a great read - a wonderful glimpse behind the scenes of the Vega$ hotel(s). I hope the thread hasn't gone completely dead and that ScoopKW will return at some point....
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Hello FeChef (and all fellow EGers),
My first post! I have "lurked" and read with interest for a very long time on these threads, but have finally decided to pop out and participate.
FeChef.... your very first pic in the thread looks similar to a fried chicken recipe I tried not too long ago. I was playing with a different type of flour as a coating. It came out remarkably similar looking to what you posted. Ironically, the base recipe came from the fried chicken thread here on eGullet, but I digress....
Here is what I did:
- Make a very thin crepe-like "batter" of all purpose flour and water
- Give the chicken a little bath in the batter
- Place chicken into seasoned (or not) rice flour, and let sit for a bit, allowing all the flour to get into the nooks and crannies. I think it is in this step that those small ricepuff like batter bits can get formed.
- deep fry to golden deliciousness
In my case, I was using chicken wings. I did not totally enjoy the final product as the texture of the coating was a just a bit too hard and crunchy for my tastes. But that's just me. Who knows, maybe it's perfect for what you're after...
Hope it helps!
[How] Do You Garnish Your Hot Dog?
in Food Traditions & Culture
Posted
Steamies have never gone out of style here in Quebec. "All dressed" will include the chopped raw onions as well as the mustard, relish and coleslaw.
If I'm in the mood, I'll get them "toasté". Which would get you a split top bun, buttered and griddled. The hot dog is also put on the flat top for a spin.
In Montreal, I've never seen any other hot dog brand other than Lester's sold at all the local casse croutes. Meh ....
For me, nothing has even come close to a Chicago dog. Although a chili dog at the Coney Island Nathan's was pretty damn close....