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Richard Kilgore

eGullet Society staff emeritus
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Posts posted by Richard Kilgore

    Apple-Cranberry Tart

    in Pastry & Baking

    Posted

    Thanks, rickster. The EH tart pan is 3/4 inch deep by 11 inches. My guess is it will be only slightly too much filling compared to a 9 inch pie pan. But I'll look at Baking with Julia, too, since that sounds similar to what I have envisioned. Thanks for the simple syrup tip. I want it to be tart, but not too tart.

    Apple-Cranberry Tart

    in Pastry & Baking

    Posted

    Okay, to clarify. When I said that presentation is as important as taste. I am talking about presentation in a pretty basic way. No flames, no exploding tarts. Just attractive in a rustic kind of way. Arranged apple slices? Rough chopped? Ideas?

    Apple-Cranberry Tart

    in Pastry & Baking

    Posted

    I am going to do a couple of apple-cranberry tarts for Thanksgiving. This will be my first tart ever. Can't be that hard, but I don't have a recipe or model for this. (And despite my Jinmyo quote below, I do use recipes. I just appreciate her sentiment.)

    I was figuring a ratio of 2.5 to 1 of apples to cranberries. Sound about right? Please humor me by assuming I can figure out how to bake a shell, but I need suggestions for how to do the filling. Though the nature of the shell is undecided as yet. I plan on doing this in two of those Emil Henry tart pans, cream interior, red exterior. I am as interested in presentation as taste.

    Thanks,

    Richard

    Rick Bayless and Burger King - Part 2

    in Ready to Eat

    Posted

    As one who did not care for the taste of the Sante Fe Chicken sandwich, I thoroughly resent being lumped in with those scurilous food snobs who look down on poor Chardonnay drinkers! :angry: As several others have said, I would rather have a Whopper if I have decided to do BK. How egalitarian, yukky-sandwich-embracing can we get?

    :smile:

    mouse in the oven.

    in Kitchen Consumer

    Posted · Edited by Richard Kilgore (log)

    Whatever you do, make sure it is dead. Many years ago I lived in a garage apartment in Austin while at the University. I discovered that I too had a rodent living in my small gas range, so I set a trap that evening. Next morning the cheese had been successfully removed without even springing the trap. So that night I set it with a piece of salami and went to bed. Sometime in the middle of the night I awoke realizing I was not alone. I opened my eyes and stared down the bed to see a rat sitting on my knee. Calm soul that I am, I merely levitated about three feet vertically and three feet horizontally. The rat ran up the frame of my front door, which I had proped open for the pleasant evening breeze, and perched on top of the door. I staggered back and clear-headedly picked up a sandal, cranked up in my best curve ball pitching form (and thought momentarily, "What makes you think you can kill a rat with a sandal?) and let loose, the sandal neatly crashing through one of the four small windows set in the door. I fumbled around in the dark until I found the other sandal by moonlight, hauled back and after another brief debate with myself about the wisdom of this approach, let loose the sandal and the rat fell dead on the floor. Hmmm? I stood back and thought again, "You can't kill a rat with a sandal at five paces." But the autopsy showed that he had been whacked in the neck by the trap and was coming to get me.

    Make sure it is dead.

    Cutting Boards

    in Kitchen Consumer

    Posted

    I am also looking for one to use as a table top for dining as well as prep...about 36X60. (I have a base with a smaller top that is okay for prep, but too small and crowded for dining. Any sources for something this large? I am guessing that end-grain would not be important (or maybe even possible) for something this large. Suggestions?

    Individual/Mini Cheesecakes

    in Pastry & Baking

    Posted

    Thanks for the clarification, Suvir. I have been catching up for the past two weeks following a week vacation. That's just the way it seems to work. So I have not been posting much lately, though I have been following a number of threads. I have been trying to do a peach & mango cobbler or Clafouti for the past week and have not gotten it done yet. Soon...soon. I have been following this thread in interest, because I want to do a few individual desserts like the cheese cakes. What kind of 3 inch pans are you using? Plain aluminum? Are they straight vertical walls? The idea of using the flan rings like alanamona does appeals to me...partly because I can also use them for rustic tarts. :smile:

    Individual/Mini Cheesecakes

    in Pastry & Baking

    Posted

    Suvir -- Interesting and helpful thread. Glad you started it.

    When you say you use "silpat muffin pans", is this something different than the flexipans? If so, how are they different and where do you get them. Do you freeze to release?

    The Mango cheesecake at Amma sounds wonderful!

    Thanks,

    Richard

    Pork Shoulder

    in Cooking

    Posted

    I made Posole following Huevos del Toro's general directions with Suzanne's technique of cooking it whole until it falls off the bone. This I did Sunday evening, and it tasted quite bland. I thought I must have really blown it. But after sitting for two days (and scraping off the layer of fat on the surface), it is absolutely wonderful tonight. I added a little hot sauce, cilantro and lime while warming it up and simmering for about 15 minutes.

    Thanks HdT and SuzanneF. :smile:

    Richard

    Rick Bayless and Burger King - Part 1

    in Ready to Eat

    Posted

    To speak to the inertia issue that Steven brought up --- This is one of the reasons that it is highly unlikely that the sandwich in question is anything resembling a step in the right direction. It is not that difficult for restaurants to make decent burgers, sandwiches and other dishes for only a little more than BK and its FF betters. As I recall it was in the early 1970s that large chain restaurants shifted from fresh food preped locally in a commissary and distributed daily to their locations, with some done on site. The advent of the microwave oven had something to do with the changes.

    Perhaps there is a FF historian here who knows more about this period, but I recall that the resulting quality change was the inverse of the change in management control. Management understandably prefers to remove unpredictability from operations, and can lose sight of other important aspects of a business (any business) in the process. I do recall being paricularly appaled in the change from fresh hashbrowns to frozen hasbrowns in one chain. I do not recall any of these restaurants having a problem with employees being able to produce a consistent enough product. These changes provided better management control, or sense of control, over portion control and accountability for waste primarily.

    Organizations change in the direction of less management control slowly if ever at all, though ocassionally radical changes are attempted. I expect that the established burger chains are more likely to go under than to make the kind of changes we are are discussing. And regardless of whatever RB thinks about his adv, I have a hard time thinking that any marketing professional would think of it as anything other than adding an additional item that will attract another tiny segment into the stores to compete with similar products at the other FF chains. You don't want to lose a car full of burger eaters to the competition because one of six has to have a chicken sandwich.

    On the other hand, there is a huge opportunity for others to fill the slowly emerging consumer demand for better, fresher, tastier fast food. Today I had a Salmon Teryaki Rice Bowl, $4.92, for lunch. It was tasty, and it was attractive.

    Rick Bayless and Burger King - Part 1

    in Ready to Eat

    Posted

    Let me mention a few other considerations.

    Fifi mentioned unavailability in suburbia. That depends upon the suburbs. The Dallas area has an enormous number of good to great small ethnic restaurants in the suburbs as well as within the Dallas city limits. Within five minutes of my home are two very good Thai restaurants, and one each very good Indian, Vietnamese, and two Chinese -- all very reasonably priced ($5 - 9). Also three more-than-acceptable to very, very good Italian places (Tuesday was Lasagna night -- $4.95 included salad and tasty rolls), and many more options if you go another four to five minutes. There are also all the fast food places. The demand is here because an affluent "Asian" population is here, otherwise I would be without.

    You know one of the things that has trouble making it here is a great Mexican-Mexican restaurant. Villa Maria (white table cloth Mexico City cuisine at bargain prices), one of the two or three best in the area, closed its doors last week, and is due to re-open as a Tex-Mex Grill next week. No demand in the suburb it was in.

    So why do we eat at the fast food chains? In addition to what has been said, partly the effects of name recognition. Burger King has been around for so long, and there is one everywhere, and the advertising is pervasive. "Ming's Chinese" can't compete for your attention. With BK at least 1) you know what it is (even if every time you drive away snarling about the card board flavor and creepy texture), and 2) you think of it when you think "I'm hungry, gotta grab a bite". It requires less active thinking when you have lots of demands on your time and mental attention. There's security and efficient neuron firing in all that.

    Another note -- I am not sure that freedom from food prep is going to be the key food issue for this century. If I had to guess without doing more research, I would bet it's going to be simply finding a way to feed the world's rapidly growing population, which will further accelerate population growth and the potential for food shortages.

    Rick Bayless and Burger King - Part 1

    in Ready to Eat

    Posted

    The net effect of reading this thread about the content of Whoppers and SFCBs (and eating one of the lousy SFCBs) has been to put me off fast foods even further than before. And not just off BK. I did check out Wendy's the next day and they do indeed appear to be cooking them at the time they are ordered, but that didn't convert me. I have been taking my lunch on days I can eat at the office, and otherwise exploring the neighborhood for little non-chain places with lunch for seven bucks or under. Today I had a Kobe Beef Rice Bowl for 4.95 at a place I had never been in before. (Yes that's right folks, Kobe Beef as in Kobe Beef.) The flavor was amazing. It didn't take any longer than driving through the BK drive thru lane, but I did sit down at their sidewalk cafe and enjoy this mid-70s day.) Now, to really avoid the fast food places on a regular basis, I do have to plan a little. But even if I forget and have to run in a grocery store, I can pick up some cheese and fruit in a flash.

    Overcoming Personal Barriers

    in Food Traditions & Culture

    Posted

    Okay, people on this thead have described several situations or issues involved.

    1) People who like to cook and have cooked in the past, but for whom it is a very low priority at the time for whatever reasons. For some of the reasons, read on.

    2) Women who don't cook because they feel that they can not cook, or admit to liking to cook, and be taken seriously in their careers. How widespread can this be and places like Whole Foods and Central Market and newer competitors for affluent food incomes exist? Are men cooking all this raw food?

    3) People who don't cook real food out of a rejection of the sensual aspects of cooking. I guess this might include people who do not see cooking as utilitarian enough, or who become uncomfortable with the pleasures of complex tastes and who prefer flat, relatively tasteless food.

    4) People who commit to so many other activities for themselves and their children that they do not allow time for cooking real food (or who perhaps eat out for all meals).

    5) A generation of people for whom family warmth and bonding mean eating out at a restaurant (fast food or otherwise), so what would the emotional motivation be for cooking at home? And how high is the skill intimidation factor with people who have grown up on fast foods and "convenience" foods?

    So let me ask everyone this. When other people react with (fill in the blank -- awe, shock, disgust) that you spend time cooking at home at all), how do you react? When people raise the questions of time, money, skill, what do you say?

    Rick Bayless and Burger King - Part 1

    in Ready to Eat

    Posted

    Yes unethical, and in these instances illegal, too. But that was not my point, of course. It was that if you set yourself up as a standard bearer for a set of values people are going to have some behavioral expectations of you. Since you and I are not members of the Chef's Collaborative and do not necesarily ascribe to those values, we would not necessarily have the same expectations of RB that his peers do (and his fans who share the same ideals). But some kind of behavioral expectations go with most ideals. And it's not that a "fallen" person can not recover. I would bet my best cast iron skillet that if RB decides he really doesn't like the effect of his endorsement on his reputation or his career (not saying that is the case), he can do even a partial mea culpa and all will be well with the local-sustainable culinary world within a year.

    Nothing "morally" wrong with branding chips and salsa, or canned and frozen foods for that matter, but you just can't easily cram antithetical disparate images into one brand name and not have it crack a little and pay a price.

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