fifi

One favorite that I forgot to mention is the David Rosengarten technique of slathering the chicken with goose fat and salting it liberally. I found this in The Fridge from his Q&A. It really screams CHICKEN! It will probably be the first thing I try in my convection oven.

Thank you for starting this thread, Dignan. I am also sick of lousy garlic. Even my favorite Asian grocery has failed me lately. It WAS better than what is in the supermarket but not those plump and juicy cloves that I yearn for. Now I know to go on a garlic search in May or June. Sometimes they get in this purplish skinned garlic that has nice big cloves. I usually roast a whole half sheet pan full and store the roasted garlic in jars in the freezer. Now I am wondering about freezing it without roasting.

Fifi; I believe we can also add okra to that list, can we not ? THW Okra slime would be in the do not touch group. I have been known to choke down okra well hidden in gumbo. Fried I will tolerate but I can't come up with a good reason to go to all of that trouble. Hell... just fry up some thin catfish filets if you want fried cornmeal. You know, I can't even come up with a mental image of what okra tastes like. All that being said, okra in general does not rise to the do not touch level.

I'll go with bugs and slugs. Nope. No escargot. Not on my watch.

Balmagowry... I am wiping my eyes as I lift myself painfully from the floor. Shortly after I left FDA, we were living with my sister for a while and we were gardening on a really big scale through the hot Texas summer. Needless to say, copious quantities of cold beer were involved. We got a batch of budweiser that had gunk settled out in the bottom. With my FDA knowledge, I could decipher the code on the six-pack. I called Budweiser. (They have a big brewery here in Houston.) The quality control guy was very polite and responsive. A few minutes later, a lady called and asked if we would be available the next morning for someone to pick up the offending remainder of the six pack. Sure enough, about 7:00 the next morning this gentleman rang the doorbell. It turns out that he was a VP of something. He had a cold six pack in hand. We served him coffee and fresh baked rolls and he entertained us with lessons on cleaning glasses and pouring beer. We were very satisfied with the outcome. Little did we know... About a week later, we are sitting on the back porch on a hot afternoon. Through the open garage door we hear the rumble and hiss of a big truck coming to a stop. This puzzled looking guy walks up and he is looking at some papers. He says he is supposed to make a delivery and is not real sure he has the right place. Outside at the curb is the biggest damned Budweiser beer truck I have ever seen. We are talking full bore 18 wheeler. After we assured him that he had the right address, he proceeded to wheel in somewhere around 50 cases of beer. Of course, all of the neighbors saw the truck and we were heckled about our prodigious beer drinking ever since.

I just want to jump in with one of my favorite writers, restauranteurs, cooks, etc., Zarella Martinez. She knows her venue and brings a personal intensity to her writing that I love. Her recipes aren't any slouch either.

At the risk of having all participants of this thread go running screaming from the room... My stint at FDA many years ago turned up some interesting things. We were the reporting office for the southeast and all of these kinds of consumer complaints came in there. Mouse in the bottom of a can of spinach. A severed digit in a can of green beans. But the topper was these "fluffy" looking things in bottles of flavored douche. "You taste it!" "No. You taste it." "Get Mikey to taste it!" And, yes, we did test it after we regained our composure. Turns out something was crystallizing out. It wasn't mold as originally thought. (If you have any memory of the culture of the late 60s you will understand why the whole thing freaked us out.)

First... This wasn't my idea. Someone else up-thread came up with it. There is a whole #2 (14 oz?) can of Goya garbanzos in there. I dumped them in a colander and rinsed them well. Then I thought it might be a good idea to dry them off some so they would get coated with the oil better. I stirred them around with a couple of paper towels. Then I got interupted and they sat in the colander for a while so they were pretty dry. I'm not sure what that has to do with anything. Half of a big red onion, quartered and cut into 1/2 inch slices. And the cauliflower, of course. All was thoroughly tossed with about 1/3 cup olive oil (or a little less) and about 1/2 teaspoon of kosher salt. (I couldn't find the Greek seasoning a la Mabelline. ) The only other difference from the original recipe is that I had to go an extra 10 minutes at 400 so that was 50 minutes. Must be the extra mass of the garbanzos. I also had that sheet on non-stick foil on the sheet pan and that extra layer may have provided enough insulation to slow it down. If that is the reason, I think the sheet of foil is still worth it because it cooked more evenly. The salad idea came up because a friend had a bunch of shrimp left over from a shrimp boil. The original idea was to make a salad with a mayo based dressing. (Sort of like for a lobster roll?) We were going to serve it on a bed of greens and sprinkle the cauliflower mixture over it. I didn't take pictures because we never got that far. Too many shrimp got eaten while we were peeling them. The cauliflower mixture was Hoovered immediately. We said... "Screw the greens we will eat our vegetables tomorrow."... then opened another bottle of wine.

Great trial GGMora. Your simmered can looks like what I get. I do take mine a little longer and it gets a little darker but not much. The consistency is the same. I had the same problem with the microwave method a few years ago. I haven't tried it since. I don't think I would even attempt the saucepan method. Too much trouble. Now to your wonderful stuff! That looks like an entirely different thing. Obviously it is darker and is more of a syrup. I have to say that I have never had anything like that either here or in Mexico. Some of what I have had in Mexico is more of the consistency as this one but lighter in color, about the same as the can, and tastes about the same as the can. Guess what I am going to try next?

Here is a picture of the onion/garbanzo/cauliflower mixture. I was going to show you how it was incorporated into a salad with shrimp etc. Unfortunately, it did not make it off the pan. The vultures ATE IT! OFF THE PAN! I was lucky to get a picture. If you see any degradation in the quality of the picture it is because I was fighting off the hungry hoards. (I went a little nuts with the garbanzos but they are so good.) New tip from my sister. That is a sheet of non-stick Reynolds aluminum foil in the half sheet pan. It worked great. It was easy to move the stuff around and the cooking was more even than the bare half sheet.

I agree with all of the above. But I would add that local, small market, critical food writing suffers from the imperative that you can't piss off the "customer", meaning the restaurant, supplier or whatever that is an advertiser in the publication. We are pretty lucky here in Houston. Alison Cook, the restaurant reviewer in the Houston Chronicle is a breath of fresh air. She has had a couple of articles outide of the restaurant scene and has done a very good job. I would like to see more of that. And we have the incomparable Robb Walsh reviewing restaurants in the weekly Houston Press. The writing of some of the others seems to be reaching for that quality.

Thank you Rachel. My nephew is a quail egg lover. I will put your research to good use. Next assignment... Ostrich!

Jenny... What Jackal10 said. Do not get discouraged. As an "experienced" cook, you should see what I ended up with the time I tried to make pearl tapioca in coconut milk.

Oh my, redfox. That is LOVELY! Now why didn't I think of that for my eggs. Now I am seeing something with lovely poached eggs crowned with the confit. I have just been reading the eGCI course on Poached Eggs and there is so much good info in there, I am tempted to try poached eggs again for the first time in many years. What a pairing!

For produce, forget the grocery stores. They are universally dismal. But that main stream grocery in Princeville had AWESOME fish. We lucked out that our arrival happened to coincide with the arrival of "the produce lady". She comes around in her pick-up a couple of times a week to the main check-in office there in the Princeville complex. The longer term residents know her schedule. We just got lucky. She had an awesome array of goodies. My sister bent her ear for at least a half an hour. (We are gardeners.) There was a pretty big produce stand operation on the highway not far from the lighthouse bird sanctuary on the north shore. (I forget the name.) Then, as we were driving around we would see roadside "stands" that were on the honor system for mangoes and such. As to the nastursiums... My sister and I are long term foragers. I know we found some other stuff but I just don't remember. The passenger in the car has the job of watching what is growing by the side of the road. If something is spotted there is much yelling and exclamation... "STOP! STOP! There is xxxxx growing in that ditch." Never mind that there is a cane truck on your butt. When I travel there with the (grown) kids, they prefer Maui and we always get a condo with a kitchen. My son likes to cook and we do well together in the kitchen. My daughter likes to eat what we cook. I have found the same situation with the produce on Maui. Forget the grocery stores. We ask a lot of questions and poke around. We can usually find something if we drive up to Kula. You have to go looking for it but that is part of the fun. I do find it odd that you have to go looking. Before we make our next trip in the next couple of years I will be doing some research on local farmers' markets. We just missed one on Kauai. We have never tried that approach on Oahu. We normally only spend a couple of nights in a hotel there. We have been known to find some roadside fruit to nosh on when we drive to the North Shore. I haven't tried this on The Big Island, either. I tend to stay on the Hilo side and I like the old Naniloa Surf hotel. I get a balconey room facing the bay and the mountains so that I have rainbows every morning. Next time, though, I am going to look for an alternative with a kitchen.

Welcome balmagowry. Thanks for the great post. What an adventure. Sounds like a really good time with your mom. The gull got me though. On offshore fishing trips, we would often make ceviche from a fresh caught mahi-mahi. If we tried to eat it while sitting on the back deck, we would have to fight the gulls off. Sometimes I go to a someone's house to make gumbo by way of teaching the techniques. Whenever I have to make gumbo in someone else's kitchen, I have to bring my wooden spatula. There is nothing like it for making a dark roux. It reliably sweeps the bottom of the pot so there is no little bit hiding in the corner getting ready to burn and screw up the whole thing. If I am not satisfied about their pots, I will have to bring the big Le Creuset as well. Of course, if I am flying the LC gets left at home and they have to go buy a pot if they don't have one. But the spatula is in my luggage. I need to buy a bunch of them. Mine is getting a bit "toasted".

This thread reminded me of the adventure that my sister and I had on the trip to Hawaii. We had a condo on Kauai and had a really good time in a very basic kitchen. I would say that we adapted pretty well. Going to places where you can get a kitchen is definitely high on my travel list. I don't really mind the limitations if the local foraging is good. I can even forgive the dull knife. Vacation cooking, the condo on Kauai

The thread on the trials of Cooking in Other People's Kitchens reminded me of how much fun my sister and I had on the trip to Hawaii a bit over a year ago. We were fortunate enough to have a fairly well equipped kitchen. There was "the produce lady" that showed up while we were checking in and we loaded up on goodies. Then the fish taco guy told us to go to the grocery store (I forget which chain) there in Princeville. That is where he often gets his sashimi grade fish for his tacos. Then we made a stop at a produce stand and got a mysterious sapote. To top it all off, my foraging sister found a bunch of nastursiums along side the road in Waimea canyon. Now that I figured out how to do pictures I thought I would share. I hope this inspires visitors to the islands to try out condo staying and cooking in the beautiful islands. I will try my best to remember what the dishes are. No guarantees there, though. This was our first dinner. We made macadamia nut encrusted tuna. The sides are rice and sauteed winged beans with Maui onion. I don't remember what all was in the salad. I do recall that we used these little mystery fruits, that we now think are probably calamondins, to provide a tart note to the macadamia nut crust and the salad dressing. The croutons are from some sandwich rolls we picked up for the next day. Our balconey friend works on his own dinner. Brunch the next day with egg salad sandwiches. The egg salad was brightened with the pepperiness of chopped nastursium leaves and flowers. You can barely see the little calamondin that we squeezed over the papaya. Note the nastursium flower and left over macadamias in the papaya. I don't remember about the little round red things. Our first introduction to sapote from the roadside fruit stand. We had heard of them but this is our first trial. Think a sweet avocado... kinda sorta. We used up the leftover tuna in a salad. There is some of the sapote in the salad. The faint sweetness of the sapote was great with the tuna. The side dish is pasta with pesto sauce that we made from several varieties of basil that we got at the fruit stand. We used macadamia nuts in the pesto and garnished with the same. The nastursiums make another appearance. edit to add: I forgot that we used the papaya seeds in the salad dressing. They added a peppery nutty note. I hope this inspires many others to take advantage of the wonderful bounty that is available. What was really fun was trying to be creative without a well stocked pantry and trying very hard to use things up before we had to move on.

I do run into the underequipped kitchen. Like the rest of you, I find the deficiencies are usually in the knife and pot category. I don't have that problem with my foodie friends. What I usually miss most are all of my jars and bottles of condiments. That includes some staples that I make myself. Some say that I have taken that to an extreme. I often think... "A dash of chile paste would sure wake this up." Or... If only I had some of my tomatillo sauce that I have in the freezer, this omelet would be so much better."

Yep... If it isn't sliced thin it is just another cauliflower. I don't get it but it must be true. The SSB in me is wondering why this is so. I will have to think about it. Mabelline... I am now sniffing at some Indian spice mixture that came from Penzey's. It was in a gift. The more I sniff it the better I like it. Can you tell what is in the Spice Islands Greek? That sounds good, too. You are right. Decisions. Decisions.

I haven't ventured into adding seasonings yet but I will try it tomorrow with the onion and garbanzo variation. One thing to look out for is too much seasoning. The first time I made this I salted it like I would anything else. The stuff shrinks down so much that it ended up a tad too salty. Now I just very lightly salt and then adjust later after it is done. I am thinking that other seasonings will concentrate as well. I am also thinking of what kind of spice mix will "toast" well. I think that is one place where Roux got into trouble. (Of course, he could have read the recipe. Sorry, I couldn't resist.) Garlic powder doesn't "toast" well. I get by with granulated garlic in my various BBQ rubs but it is in a relatively small amount and not as fine as powder. A few years ago I tried a rub recipe that had a lot of powdered garlic and it came out unpleasant on the pork I put it on. I am considering adding the seasoning toward the end of cooking or maybe when I take it out altogether.

I see a couple of things wrong here. did you read the the RECIPE? It sounds like you used whole florets. First, you need to slice the florets about an 1/4 inch thick. (I do it a little thinner.) You will get these lacy looking things and a lot of gibbles. Put all of that in a bowl and toss it with olive oil until it is well coated. Salt lightly. Spread in a single layer on the sheet pan. I use a heavy aluminum half sheet. Your oven wasn't hot enough and you didn't cook it long enough. In my oven, it goes for about 38 to 40 minutes at 400F and I have checked the oven so that is correct. You need to move it around and turn it about half way through. It sounds like what you ended up with was sort of baked. Maybe that is why there is some residual bitterness. Although, I have to say, I don't usually detect a lot of bitterness in cauliflower. Maybe you got a funky one. edit to add: Lose the garlic powder. That might be where you got the bitterness.

Sometimes directing some hot water on the lid only works. The theory is that you get some thermal expansion of the lid. Note that I said sometimes. I usually use the churchkey approach and then the rubber thingy. I also usually try banging it on the floor lid side down. Then you could invest in this gadget. I don't know why but this thing cracks me up. I wanted to nominate it for stupidest appliance of 2003. But, I guess if you have arthritis or weakness in your hands it might be a good thing.

OKRA? OKRA? Off with his pods! er... I mean... um... Yeah... pods. Ah... It is good to be Queen.

I actually read this whole thread and am astonished that no one challenged this from FG on page one. Anything other than low and slow cannot be called BBQ in Texas without the perpetrator being run out of town on a rail. While brisket is the odds-on favorite here, we do our share of pork, especially ribs. It is also not unusual for a pork butt to go on the "pit" and get pulled off at about the 12th hour while the brisket basks for another 6 hours or so. It is also quite common to throw some chicken parts and sausage in there for munchies. A regional favorite sausage called "hot links" are typical. I think you can say that they are BBQ'd but I am kind of on the fence on that one. You don't have the same collagen conversion and fat basting going on that you have with that big hunk of meat or slab of ribs. I have bemoaned the near disappearance of beef ribs on other threads. I am not talking about short ribs but those honkin' big beef ribs with about an inch of meat still tentatively clinging to the bone. I suspect two reasons for this. One is that they take up too much room in the "pit" to make them commercially viable. Then, unless you have them custom cut, you can't find any beef ribs with any meat left on them. For some reason, around here the BBQ apparatus is usually referred to as "the pit" and you don't find many actual pits in these parts. The person tending the fire and directing the whole process is referred to as "the pitmaster". Generally speaking, a good pitmaster will not allow the temperature where the meat is lounging to exceed about 225F. So we are back to low, which means, necessarily, slow. How you can have BBQ without wood, smoke, or at least charcoal escapes me. Any definition has to include the essentials: Low temperature Slow cooking - many hours Wood, smoke, charcoal or some combination Then you can sort the sub-species by type of meat and cut, region, seasoning method or whatever.