fifi

Duh!!! How could I have forgotten Hong Kong Market?! They also have things you never thought of frozen, not to mention dried. The place really is worth making a special trip.

While cleaning out the deep freeze at my mother's house, we found some shrimp tails that were at least 3 years old. Mother used to freeze them in cartons in water. We got really curious and didn't expect much but they were perfectly fine. Of course, mother kept the freezer running well below zero. You won't get that in a refrigerator freezer. Freezing fish filets in water is kind of standard procedure here. However, any seafood with appreciable fat content can start to taste really funny after a few months. I say toss 'em.

Boiling with heads on is certainly the traditional way to go. However... I do have a case for heading them first. We do a yearly party for about 80 people and boiled shrimp are the "appetizer". Given the size of the crowd, we really can't afford the space in the pot to leave the heads on. (We have to do two boils as it is.) We also found that there is a neat technique you can use when heading them that "deveins" at the same time. The other advantage is that we put the heads in the crab traps so the kids can catch some crabs. (Plus we have some folks that would get really grossed out with the heads on.) We find that the heads off makes a little difference in flavor but not enough to override the other reasons. We got into quite a discussion about ease-of-peeling-mysteries here. The research paid off as seen here.

Absolutely. There are some applications where, using your garlic powder example, that nothing else will do. Dry rubs for BBQ come to mind. Then there are recipes that would suffer from tampering with. On several threads, it has come up that the ubiquitous green beans with the mushroom soup and canned fried onions is just not the same thing if you make it from scratch. I have an old crock pot recipe for beef stew that uses a can of mushroom soup and a package on onion soup mix. It just isn't right without those. I have a yellow squash recipe that starts out with diced onion lightly browned in butter. It is better with the dried onion flakes. There is a nuttiness to the flavor that is really good. Then there are the "comfort foods" that some of us remember from our childhood, particularly if our childhood was in the 50s, that rely on the prepared food craze at the time.

Fascinating Nature program on PBS all about octopus... now.

My eGulley laugh for the day. Yesterday, at my H.E.B., I was winding my way through the produce section. (They make it pretty labyrinthine on purpose.) As I got to the end where the onions and potatoes are, there are no plastic bags on the spindle thingies. I had to make my way back around to the beginning to find some. I pointed this out to a "produce person", who looked back at me blankly. Oh well. I didn't really need those mushrooms anyway.

I am not a raw tomato eater, but I have always been intrigued with the concept of fried green tomatoes. I am going to try it. I am wondering if the same "oven frying" technique that I have used for eggplant for years would work or if there is too much water in the tomato. Oven fried eggplant: Whisk together thoroughly 1/4 cup cooking oil and one egg. Dip 1/4 inch eggplant slices into the oil/egg mixture. Dip into seasoned breadcrumbs of your choice. On a baking sheet in a 375F oven, bake, turning once, for about 15 to 20 minutes per side. Also works for summer squash like yellow or zucchini. Worse than potato chips.

SSB = Smug Scientific Bastard Any chance of finding out what tequesquite is chemically? Also, where would a gringo get some? Oh... The anise seeds are for the flavor. I get that. My sister has a huge hoja santa patch. Add that to the tea maybe? Tomatillo husks could have some acidity from oxalic acid... maybe. Tannins would likely be there but I can't see what that would do. Then there are the sticky polysaccharides but I have no idea what that would do either. *this kind of thing drives me nuts*

Actually... Marlin should not be kept but should be released if caught by a sport fisherman. However, there is quite a by-catch by the longliners so I guess that it is best not to waste it. It really isn't that good to eat. About the only way I have had it that I really liked was smoked. Back in the days when fishing tournaments weren't catch and release, someone would usually have a big smoker set up and all kinds of hunks of fish were smoked. A really inspired cook would have the fish taco makings handy. I will have to give the rare fish bit a pass as well so any finny friend that isn't so good cooked is probably off my menu.

I think I remember that David R. didn't have gas. Neither did the first Essence of Emeril set. The reason I was thinking that is because I thought it really odd that here the hot shot food guys were having to deal with electric. Then there was a special, I think, (or was it an article) about their move to a new studio where they could get gas. This was quite some time ago, though.

Funny you should bring that up but we have a family dish called "scorched squash" that is the result of a mistake initially. You saute some onion in quite a lot of butter, dried onion flakes are really best, until browned. Then you put in the yellow squash slices and you let the water cook off and the squash kind of brown (scorch). Delicious.

Cashews win in the flavor category. Macadamia nuts come in a close second but more for texture than taste. Next are pecans. Funny thing is, I don't care for nuts in sweets. Keep those nuts out of my brownies or fudge. One weird thing that has happened. I roasted some nuts for the holidays using the worchestershire and butter mixture like for Chex mix. The walnuts turned out tasting really fishy and yukky, possibly from the anchovie elements in the worchestershire.

OK... This SSB is fascinated. I can't wait to see what is going on with the tomatillo husks. The alkaline deposits should be pretty easy to identify. But the anise seeds baffle me.

First... welcome. I hope you stick around and post a lot. Check out the seafood dealers in Seabrook on the channel. Also Hillman's in Dickenson off of 146. For sushi grade stuff, you probably need to lurk around those places and get to know the folks so that they can call you when a particularly good fish comes in.

Hmmm... I seem to remember that Aunt Minnie used a very hot oven. I have no idea what the actual temperature was. Maybe it has something to do with a "popover effect".

I am definitely going to try this. I had actually never thought about doing anything like that. I cook with cream a lot and can see how it would work. My kids always tease me about the fact that I think cream is one of the basic food groups. Next time I make a hash for them and add the cream, I can hear it now. "ACK! Another one of Mom's fat fests! Yippee!" BTW... All of our cholesterol numbers are quite respectable, thank you.

heh... It seems that a lot of us have a butt load of baggage about biscuits. We seem to have that "ideal" burned into our brain and I am sure that it is surrounded by all sorts of fond memories. I will bet that somewhere out there, someone is trying to recreate those crumbly hockey pucks that their grandmother so lovingly made. Now I am off to hunt down some White Lily flour.

Ummm... and in what city is this marvel of marketing genius?

Interesting. I have not read that Villas book. Hashes that I have had (and made) here in Texas and those made by the cooks I know, do not use any cream or other sauce type component. They are more of the "crispy bits" variety, potato and onion being a common denominator. Anything else goes. One of the revelations on hash, that I read here somewhere, was to put the potato and onion and whatever on one side of the skillet and the diced meat on the other. That way, the steam from the potato and onion didn't inhibit the crusting of the meat. Then you can slide the skillet off to one side of the burner to crisp up the potato and onion a bit more without overdoing the meat. Then you finally mix it all together. The best hash I ever made was with smoked pork butt, diced onion and potato, diced poblano, jalepeno and some other pepper, all cooked in bacon grease. Wowser.

*bump* The Southern Breakfast thread in the Southeast forum caused me to go searching for this topic. I am determined to master the art of the biscuit. I have finally ventured into a wee bit of baking. I had a bit of success with cobbler dough using Mayhaw Man's recipe. I have even gotten good at making the cream biscuits from Cooks Illustrated. Now I want to attempt REAL biscuits. Unfortunately, the model and the memory is from my childhood and my great aunt Minnie. Her biscuits were so amazing that my mother and grandmother chose not to compete, so we really didn't have biscuits all that often between her visits. I am pretty sure she used lard, at least when I was very young. She may have swithched to Crisco in later years. She had two styles. One was the crispy outside type that were baked apart on a cookie sheet. The other was in a cast iron skillet. She would melt some fat in the skillet, turn the biscuits in the fat to fully coat them, and bake them nestled side by side. She insisted that the cutter had to be really sharp. I remember this because she always complained, "Ola, that cutter ain't worth a damn." Then she just started packing her own cutter. What I am interested in is... Some of you that contributed to this thread last year, what have you learned since your forays into biscuit making?

Maybe you make them anyway. There is a case for non-treated corn being made into tamales. I don't know about tortillas. I just learned about the tamales from reading Robb Walsh's book The Tex-Mex Cookbook, A History in Recipes and Photos. This sounds like a good question for Robb in the upcoming Q&A.

Do any of you guys think the teeth are a little off-putting? (heh, heh, heh)

I think andiesinji has said it best. Different m&ps for different purposes. I just find that the granite one works pretty well for anything that I want it to do. That doesn't mean that the others are perfectly fine, and sometimes superior for a specific job. Why not get several? They are really pretty sitting on the shelf.

At Ace Mart: Deli containers, packs of 50 for about 10 cents apiece. The lids seal really well, too. Heavy aluminum half sheet pans for about $5. Don't forget to look for the wire racks that fit the pans. Big packs of the terry cloth "bar mops". They are my everyday dish towels by a mile. I have a huge pile of them and if one gets wet or grubby, it goes in the washer. I may use 5 or 6 of them in an evening. I use them as gifts for my dish towel challenged friends and family. The "little gadgets" aren't always a bargain. But I did finally find the red plastic shrimp peelers there.

Now that is truly inspired. Mine has an inside diameter of about six inches. I am thinking getting a bigger one. Perhaps a lid from a bigger coffee can?