Jump to content

Thanks for the Crepes

participating member
  • Posts

    2,734
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Thanks for the Crepes

  1. liuzhou, I definitely remember flour and water paste in elementary school in Chula Vista, CA. We also did carved potato prints with tempura paint, although, I can't remember actually carving the potatoes. I doubt they allowed us knives, because we were relegated to the rounded-end scissors. We also made necklaces from macaroni, and glued various colored legumes and pasta to a backboard to make artwork. I didn't question the adults at the time, but now it seems wasteful of food when I think about it. It was a lot of fun at the time, though. SylviaLovegren, I remember the smell of flour/water paste when allowed to sit too long. Horrible. I think this happened at home for some papier-mâché sculptures I was working on. I learned to make smaller amounts and not try to save them over from day to day. I attribute this experience to the reason I don't try sour doughs at home, although I love them when someone who knows what they're doing makes them. Later on, we did the science experiment with powering a light bulb with potatoes. That was really cool, but I'll be dogged if I truly understand to this day what makes it work. I wish we'd done it later in school, so I would really get it, but I guess if I wanted to I could spend the research time on the internet. It may be related to why even stainless steel screws and fittings can corrode in use on sea-going vessels, and one day, I may get enough of a bur under my saddle to get a better handle on it.
  2. gfron1, Awesome video! Like Alton Brown, skirt is my favorite cut (rib eye is second), but hard to come by around here. Those are by far the thickest, most beautiful ones I've ever seen. There's not a lot of that cut to go around on even a large animal which explains its scarcity. Smart people scarf it up whenever they get the chance, and I don't blame them. The only things I have ever had direct experience with cooking in coals are foil-wrapped potatoes and corn in water-soaked husks, also over wrapped with foil. I've also placed fish packets with thin sliced veggies in foil into the fire and less tender steaks with thicker cut-up seasoned veggies in campfires, also in foil, with good results in wood campfires. This will be corrected after these posts, as I adore a good char on very rare meat, and so does my husband. It's a little scary, but I'm willing to give it a try. I can conceive of this being the way people cooked mammoth or bison meat for centuries.
  3. I'm with Deryn on the old school marketing. I have several recipes that I have collected and saved over the years that were developed as marketing ploys by the distributors of food products. Hershey's "Perfectly Chocolate" chocolate cake, Quaker Grits "Baked Cheese Grits," and a corned beef and cabbage casserole recipe with egg noodles, Swiss cheese and caraway seed from the Libbey's corned beef can label, pop to mind off the top of my head, but there are many others. These have made me use more of the marketed product than I may have otherwise by actually adding value to what they are trying to sell. I miss the manufacturers' recipes. They used to be a good risk, because the writers were highly motivated to give you a good dish, so that you'd want to come back and purchase their product again. They're few and far between these days. Sad for those like me who care, and sad for the corporations, because a tasty recipe can hook people for a lifetime. I really doubt any of the trendy nonsense the OP, teagal, mentioned will do that.
  4. Toliver, heidih's link to the bottled tea comparison at Serious Eats, is a good one, and backed up by Lisa Shock's testimony in her above post. My only problem is that these brands can be hard to find, even in the iced tea capital of the South, where I live. They may be more available in Bakersfield. I would also direct you to another post on Serious Eats about refrigerator tea which is super easy to make; it just takes some time. This method doesn't dirty any extra pots, just the cold brew pitcher/vessel. Since you prefer unsweetened, like I do, it won 't be an issue for you trying to dissolve sugar into cold tea. It might be worth giving it a whirl since you're concerned about additives. http://drinks.seriouseats.com/2012/07/the-food-lab-the-truth-about-sun-tea-forget-the-sun-cold-brew-tea-is-better.html I just put some on myself, which amounted to drawing a gallon of water and plopping in 4 quart-sized Luzianne tea bags, putting the top on and putting the pitcher into the fridge. It's an experiment for me. I've never tried it before, but I'll try anything to make my life easier.
  5. Thank you for taking the time to share your trip with us, Kim. It was such a treat to see all the wonderful food, and hear about the good times you shared with Rachel and her family!
  6. I just remembered something I did to the chicken salad I thought was so good, and after my husband ate his lunch with it, he said so too. I used Goya Adobo seasoning. I'll be doing this again.
  7. Shel_B, The Red Apple Rest sounds very cool. Do you remember what kind of food they served?
  8. I used to eat a breakfast biscuit or McMuffin on the way to work. I did this because there was no way I had time to sit down and eat breakfast. It was safe because I started out driving a four on the floor with no power steering for years. An auto trannie with power steering practically drives itself compared to that. It also didn't hurt that I was in the ER as little kid for eating some questionable berries on the way to school when they brought in an auto accident victim. At least in this ER in Southern, CA, they had no private rooms in the 60's, only curtains, so I got a good look at him before they pulled his curtain. That curtain did nothing to block the sounds of his suffering. That stuck with me hard, and I have never even come close to having an accident that was my fault to this day. We weren't allowed to eat anything in our parents' car as kids, and since you turn into your parents, like it or not, I've always been fastidious about my car. When I do eat fries in the interest of enjoying them while they're hot, or a breakfast biscuit in the wrapper, I rarely drop anything. If I do, I wait until I'm parked or at least stopped at a light, and take care of the mess. The thought of a child eating anything in my car makes me shudder. I may pack a few snacks or drinks for a road trip to eat in the car or motel room, but a major part of the fun of traveling to me is to experience restaurants I haven't been to before. It's easy now, with the internet, to locate good mom and pop roadfood joints, although they are vastly outnumbered by chains. It's worth the effort to me. I love the old timey drive ins with car hop service. There are still a few left in the South, including a Sonic Drive In less than 3 miles from my house. The food is okay, but certainly not the best of its type available in the area. The point is, it brings me back to a kinder, gentler world I liked a lot better than the one we have now.
  9. cakewalk, You're absolutely right! It would make a great thread (the Chinese breads), if some of the knowledgeable folks we're so lucky to have around here choose to contribute. Can anyone tell I just love breads from all around the world? Edit: to clarify the great thread I meant was Chinese breads, because other posts intervened while I was posting, and messed with the continuity.
  10. Link to wiki article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaobing It says they are unleavened and layered, but the photos sure look yeasted to me too. Lots more images of shao bing on Google images. If they truly are unleavened, that is one impressive layering technique.
  11. Ooh! Ooh! Indian breads: roti, chapathi, naan, poori, paratha, batura, and some of these can be deliciously stuffed. cakewalk, I see the above message was delivered with a wink, but since Caren, the OP, said the focus of the book was for breads from around the globe, I think Chinese breads are quite on point. Who doesn't love a scallion pancake or char/cha siu bao? OK, I get it, you're saying they could write a whole 'nother book on Chinese bread stuff. Same for Indian, American, Greek, Turkish ... What an exciting topic! I just love it. I just remembered my favorite English contribution: Yorkshire pudding/popovers.
  12. ElainaA, I Googled "stretch bread Syracuse", and it's apparently legit, and sounds good. I hadn't heard of it either, not that that means anything. Maybe this is what Caren meant by "hyper-regional"?
  13. My city is Cary, NC, a contiguous suburb of Raleigh. I'd say two of our distinctive regional breads are fluffy biscuits and cornbread, with many variations. Big, fluffy yeast rolls also play a big part in good Southern meals, but that is less well-known, I think. Cornbread takes on the form of skillet-cooked flatbreads (pone) in summer because it's so hot down here in that season, and folks are loath to turn on an oven running against the requisite A/C. At pig-pickin's breads are usually hushpuppies, and/or commercial soft white spongy bread. I doubt the latter is fodder for MC, but it is a cultural institution. Spongy white bread is also de rigueur for our iconic summer tomato sandwiches, with Duke's mayo, of course. Hushpuppies show up at most fish fries too. Both fish fries and pick-pickin's are held outdoors in the summer and fall, again due to the heat. Other ideas, not specific to the Southeast US, are: sopapillas, NM po' boy rolls, New Orleans, LA ployes, Acadian buckwheat pancakes, ME pasties bierocks Caren, I missed whether you are even interested in quick breads or not in the scope of your project. We have members from many countries. Franci, in particular, who is conversant in many of the regional foods from Italy, including breads. There's another member from the US, Ann_T, who makes absolutely phenomenal yeast breads! Are you interested in regional pizza (crust) styles? Chinese stuffed steamed buns, other stuffed breads? Good luck with your project!
  14. Everyone has outdone themselves, lately. Beautiful meals! The tempura zucchini blossoms from mm84321, and the stellar pizzas and bread from Ann_T particularly speak to me. kayb, Thanks so much for taking the time to describe your okra breading method. That makes perfect sense to put the "slime" to work as an adherent for the breading. I usually use all cornmeal, but the flour will probably also help it to stick better. I'll try your method next time I get some okra, which should be soon, because the neighborhood vegetarian Southern Indian market almost always has some. Meals here have been mostly based on the roast chicken from earlier: chicken tacos, burritos, ramen noodle soup, sliced chicken sandwiches, chicken salad sandwiches for the husband's lunch tomorrow. We have one more round of roast chicken for dinner tomorrow, probably with mashed potatoes and broccoli and cheese. There is a saying about a ham and two people being the definition of forever, but for me and my husband, with our older diminished appetites, a big agribusiness chicken sure lasts a long time. I can't eat much of it myself, but I had a chicken salad sandwich a while ago, and it was actually pretty good. I put a little thyme in it with onion, celery, Duke's mayo, salt and pepper. Edit: Morkai, So glad that Lobel's is going to do right by you. I hope you get you mega-money's worth.
  15. Some things I love having stashed for quick meals or snacks that can be made in large batches, then frozen in one or two person portions for small households: Empanadas Lasagna Egg or spring rolls Pasta sauces Meatloaf Pulled pork Stuffed crepes (ham, Swiss cheese, and bechamel made with whole milk freezes well ) Enchiladas and enchilada sauce/mole Pancakes Cornbread Biscuits Burritos Pizza dough and sauce Baked pizza Leftover plain rice or other rice dishes Muffins Cake Cookies Freezing leftovers from big batches really cuts down on waste for our two-person household and allows me to put better food on the table with a lot less effort. My rule of thumb is if Stouffer's, TJ's or someone else who sells decent frozen prepared food offers it, it's worth a try at least. Dinner can be as simple as some frozen pancakes (I make savory ones with veggies too) popped into the toaster, then buttered and/or some syrup added, if you're really tired or rushed. Maybe with a simple side veggie or fruit salad, or a quick fried egg.
  16. That was some mighty fine summer on a plate. When I saw the photo, I thought the chop was a chicken breast. My first thought exactly was, "I'd give the chicken a pass, and take or leave the peas, but make a meal out on the creamed corn, okra and tomatoes." The pork looks perfectly cooked, but I'm just not too much of a meat eater, especially when veggies like those on your plate are available. Did you bread the okra yourself? I can get better results from frozen pre-breaded, because my breading tends to mostly fall off in the skillet. Would you mind sharing your technique, please?
  17. Beautiful breakfasts, everyone. Okanagancook, and anyone else who is blessed with a bounty of zucchini and looking for a way to use a bunch of them in a delicious way, Try slicing them lengthwise about 1/4 inch thick, tossing them in just plain AP flour in a recycled produce bag, shaking, wiping off excess flour, and frying them in a skillet with 1/4" hot vegetable oil over medium heat for 5 or 6 minutes per side over medium heat. We love summer zucchini like this. When you take them out of the oil, drain and blot both sides with several thicknesses of cheap paper towels. Then sprinkle with kosher salt while still hot and serve. We can both eat about a pound of these apiece (raw weight, they'll dehydrate) as a first course, with a small protein second course. An egg or two would be the perfect breakfast second course with it. I always serve fried zukes as a first course, because they need to be served piping hot to be at their best. I tried Marcella Hazan's batter fried zukes one time, and neither one of us liked them as much as my simple prep, although, like every Marcella recipe I ever tried, it was still very good.
  18. cdh, Member gfron1 made a dessert for a kid who had never had a real one at his restaurant back in April. On this thread: http://forums.egullet.org/topic/151060-dessert-no-wheat-egg-peanut-tree-nut-barley-arrowroot/page-2 He includes a photo of the final product with chickpea meringue at post 43. Some discussion follows. It apparently deflates pretty quickly.
  19. Yeah, The employees at the Cary TJ's are helpful and nice, to the point that I even had a lady cashier) open and check my eggs I was buying for breakage (I always check my own, down to seeing if every single one is loose in the carton; if it isn't, that means egg has leaked out and dried and glued it to the carton). However, back when they did the lottery, they just gave you tickets, and put them in your bags. I realized after the first time, there was no way to win, so I passed on subsequent visits. They are polite and helpful, much more so than other grocers in our area, but the "lottery" was a sham in our location.
  20. Chris, Apparently forgetting the garnish has become my signature. I cannot tell you how may times I serve plates and then have to make an extra trip with the garnish. Sliced and deseeded lemons on the cutting board for seafood, chopped herbs on the cutting board, olives, halved grape tomatoes, cheese. These are all prepped ingredients. I suppose my wish to put food on the table while it's piping hot is to blame? I sure wouldn't be a good micro greens tweezer-garnishing chef while the food got stone cold, would I?
  21. Shelby, All of it looks great, but for some reason, those egg rolls are captivating me. I like the darker fry on them. Crispity, crunchity! I sure would like one right now. What are they stuffed with?
  22. Morkai, At upwards of $48 a pound, I am very sorry to hear that you got anything less than manna from Heaven beef. Still, If these steaks were in my larder, I'd cook them like I usually do a nice (much cheaper) thick steak. That is with with salt and freshly ground pepper as the only adulterations, and grill them over hot charcoal. If I couldn't manage that, I'd at least grill them on a gas grill over high flame. It's a waste of a good and expensive ingredient to me any other way. Some folks are satisfied with a steak seared in a hot cast iron pan, but I'm not one of them. They are a little better under the broiler, but still no cigar to me. That's just my taste though, and thankfully, my husband shares it. He's from Pittsburgh, and we both like our steaks, guess what? Pittsburgh! That means a thick, good steak, with a very blackened, charred crust, but very, very rare but warm inside. In order to cook thick steaks Pittsburgh properly, it's necessary to turn them on their thinner sides, especially the fat cap sides, with tongs and get a good char there too. The thickest steaks will stand on their own without tong support on the thin side. You need a screechin' hot fire to do this. There actually is very minimal grey under the blackened crust when the fire is hot enough and the steaks have been seasoned and set out of the fridge to marinate in salt and pepper, and come to room temp. It's also possible to get some of the effect with thinner steaks, but they must go into the freezer a while before grilling. Really thin 1/2" should be grilled from frozen solid to get anywhere near Pittsburgh. It only works with tender steaks. Few restaurants in the South know how to do this, so it's a much better value for me to cook steaks at home. Of course everyone is entitled to cook (ruin ) their steaks just as they like, including my BIL who adores gray meat. For dinner and meals into the future I roasted a large chicken, perfectly cooked and very juicy, if I do say so myself. I took the meat off the bones, saved the drippings and froze them along with the bones for soup and/or gravy. I am doing the best I can with what I've been dealt, but it's not up to par with usual yet. The husband demands meat, and he got it with leftover butter beans and a sliced chicken breast sandwich for tomorrow's lunch on hollowed out French bread with lettuce, tomato mayo and cheese. Coons got the scooped out bread, so no waste. There's also leftover veggie fried rice with eggs, so no one's going to starve around here anytime soon.
  23. Hey, radtek, and kayb, I have stuck into my old seventies "Betty Crocker Cookbook" in the tabbed divider for the Meats chapter a sticker about marinating meat with natural enzymes from fresh ginger, kiwi, figs and pineapple. I got this off a package of meat, but can't remember what kind. I suspect it was a tougher cut that needs marinating like London Broil. There's also an end panel from a Jell-o package. I don't eat much Jell-o, but when I go on a diet, the sugarless kind feels like food for almost no calories. Anyhoo, the Jell-o pack note was added because it mentions all of the above (fresh ginger, kiwi, figs and pineapple) but also mentions papaya and guava because the gelatin won't set. It apparently messes with the protein structure. I have over-marinated meat before, and I find it most unpleasant. I have instant meat tenderizer that contains an ingredient called bromelain and says it's derived from pineapple. I love grilled or broiled pineapple. It's even good sauteed in some butter and brown sugar. I have over-marinated my inner lips by eating too much raw pineapple, especially when I tried to eat the wasted bits off the inner side of the peels around the "eyes". That won't happen again; it was quite painful. Don't try this at home or anywhere. I always scrape mango and kiwi peels with my teeth as cook's treat, but I'll just let pineapple peels go to waste. Dinners have been very basic around here since Saturday, late, maybe Sunday morning early when I apparently had a stroke. It was mild, and I was able to cook the very next day the baby back ribs I had marinated in grated ginger, vinegar, soy sauce, a bit of sugar, crushed red pepper, five spice, garlic, and scallions from the back deck. I do have a big problem though, because my left eye won't blink, so I have to do it manually, otherwise it'll dry out. It takes forever to type, and any task that takes both hand for cooking is on pause every few seconds while one of my clean hands, wrists or forearms goes up to do the blinking. The ribs were served with butternut squash, and I'm lucky my husband likes it just like I do: very simply with a bit of butter and salt. (We also prefer sweet potatoes which are native and cheap just this way. No sweetened, spiced, marshmallow-topped casseroles for us.) We also had giant butter beans and a very good jarred unsweetened, applesauce. I garnished the baby backs with more sliced scallions from the deck. Thanks, dcarch. I now have edible food all summer again from what would have been waste.
  24. rotuts, The last place we lived in Chula Vista, CA had an apricot tree (and a lemon tree, hibiscus, bird of paradise, fuchsia, a ten-foot-tall poinsettia, ...). I remember the perfume of the apricot fruit when they came ripe, and I remember my mom putting up apricot preserves for us to eat throughout the year. I was SO excited when I saw seasonal fresh apricots start to appear in southeast grocers, and gladly paid the steep price a few times, but was bitterly disappointed, because the grocery store variety are apparently picked green and never develop the perfume. Seems I'm relegated to dried apricots and my memories. Next time you post in the TJ's thread, would you mind posting about your experience of apricot products? I know they have good dried both sulfured and unsulfured last time I checked. kayb, Some of the best-tasting preserves I ever put up were made of ripe pears from our backyard tree in VA. Did you know wasps love ripe pears too, and break through the skin themselves, or take advantage of bird pecks? You have to beat them to the fruit. I just cut out the compromised spots. Pears are one fruit that will ripen pretty well rock hard from the grocery, but still not as good as tree-ripened to me. I don't believe I've ever seen pear preserves in a store, and that's a pity. When I lived with my grandparents in Louisiana, we put up all the veggies from the big garden in shelf stable mason jars for winter. I was on sous chef duty, doing a lot of weeding, picking, peeling and prepping, while the adult women did the actual jar sterilization and canning. Then in late autumn, we'd all butcher chickens, ducks, hogs, and male yearling or so cattle to put up for the extended family freezers. An aunt who raised rabbits on her farm would have folks out to her place for a butchery party complete with huge feast afterward, and everyone would take rabbit home for their freezers. It wasn't illegal back then to do all the killing and butchering on your own property. This was all old school free range meat, and the best I probably have hope of ever eating in my life. This was true even after retrieval from the freezer. When I had a big garden in Memphis, I would usually freeze the produce, because it tastes better to me, and I thought it safer. I would pickle shelf stable home grown jalapenos, the hottest I've ever tasted. I always reduced the ripe tomatoes into sauce to take up less space in the freezer. Another thing I would do is set sheets of plywood up on cinder blocks in a sunny spare room and put all the green or unripe tomatoes on them right before the first frost. In Memphis' climate with irrigation, I always had tons (not literally, but a couple hundred pounds at least) of tomatoes I would lose to frost damage otherwise. I love fried green tomatoes as much as the next southern gal, but there was no way two people were going to eat up all that bounty that way. It turns out that healthy, well nourished, tomatoes, even when picked green and put in a sunny room like I did will ripen a few at a time to nice and red with lovely flavor over a period of about three months. Bonus: you can enjoy fried green tomatoes anytime during this period. The indoor-ripened ones were much better-tasting than styromates from the grocery, and almost lasted until spring. I did turn them over on the boards every few days, checking for any bad spots, and those got used or tossed on the compost pile. If you have a warm, sunny place where you can put your unripe tomatoes on a semi-absorbent surface before frost takes them, I highly recommend it. Also, if you live up north with an unheated basement like we did in Vermont for a while, that's a very good place to store bushels of apples over the winter after the autumn harvest. I love McIntosh, and they last decently in a Vermont cellar for several months without becoming mealy. Again, go through them occasionally, because we all know what they say about one bad apple. When we lived near this apple orchard before they became over-priced tourist attractions, you used to be able to get a bushel of windfalls for $2 at harvest time. We would make pies and put them in the deep freeze for family consumption over the winter. We'd freeze them unbaked, and pop them into the oven after cooking dinner, and they made a delicious dessert.
  25. Chris, Very nice Mexican food coming out of your kitchen. Those crispy rice and bean cakes look like a dish that would be right up my alley. I frequently have leftover Mexican rice, and/or beans, and love a simple entree idea to use them up. What cheese(s) does Mr. Bayless call for in his recipe? No egg in it to help bind the patties?
×
×
  • Create New...