Crimes Against Food

[foodiehall]

Stacked food....a tower of food perched in the middle of a big dinner plate. What's the point? To see how many layers of food you can pile on before the tower crashes? It's impossible to eat without first disassembling the tower. Several years ago, I thought/hoped this was a passing fad, but many "fine dining" places are still doing it. A couple weeks ago, I had dinner in one of Charleston's (SC) better restaurants. A potato cake was placed under layers of sauteed spinach and a piece of fish....resulting in a soggy potato cake which should have had a crisp surface. I'm sorry now that I didn't complain.

[Mabelline]

Just two quick observations; it's been a long time, and I reread the whole thread, and two bug out at me.

If your cornbread's sweetened and cake-y, it's what we always called johnnycake.

I know I'll get fried for this farmed catfish used for fried. GAWD, PUHLEEZE. It has no resemblance to a good, fresh, trotline cat, cut,frozen the right way, then thawed and fried the way cats were invented for. And the next time I hear someone carry on about catfish "being bottom feeders", learn about them. There are many different species of cats, and blues in particular will not usually touch dead baits. The thermocline in water also keeps many fish off bottom in hot weather, as there's no oxygen there.Speaking of bottomfeeders, whatcha think a lobster is? The fact that catfish will carry the taste of the waste in their water is more an indicator of a larger problem, the way a mine canary would.

Ahem. Sorry. carry on.

[Hector]

Meat substitutes are fine when they're Chinese, as in vegetarian duck. People who are not vegetarians are delighted to have some delicious Chinese vegetarian food that mocks the texture and flavor of ham, pork, whatever. But protose steak sucks!

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Wow! didn't know that. How do they make those so supperior to other substitutes them? let say, how do you make a thing that mocks the texture of such a thing as duck?

[Pan]

Meat substitutes are fine when they're Chinese, as in vegetarian duck. People who are not vegetarians are delighted to have some delicious Chinese vegetarian food that mocks the texture and flavor of ham, pork, whatever. But protose steak sucks!

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Wow! didn't know that. How do they make those so supperior to other substitutes them? let say, how do you make a thing that mocks the texture of such a thing as duck?

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I've seen it argued that the thing that makes it best is that it isn't made to really be so much like duck, but good for its own sake. But when I was in Hong Kong, there was a little storefront that made wonderful vegetarian dim sum, and the things they made did taste and feel like ham, cuttlefish tentacles, and so on. I really have no idea how they did it.