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Licking the Plate


Carrot Top

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Poll

Which food comes closest to a spiritual experience when consumed in everyday life?

Chocolate

Bacon cheeseburger

Chicken soup

Bread

Wine

Pastry

Tofu

Coffee

Peanut butter

Fruit

(You can take the quiz to find the results at Beliefnet - it's on the right-hand lower side of the page linked. . .

(voted)

[X] Bread :smile:

(viewed results)

[X] BREAD 9%! :shock:

SB (what's wrong with these people! :angry: )

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Why, I'll give you échalotes, cornichons au vinaigre, and, especially, de bouillon de boeuf! :huh:

SB (ne peut pas lire la langue française :raz: )

What can I say? I was still on a buzz from the sauce, and felt as if I could speak any language, any language at all.

Besides, that recipe was *not* exactly the way I make my sauce - I scanned several that were on-line and could not find one that was perfect, so instead chose one that was French. :smile:

Yeah, boullion de bouef. Roll that around on your tongue a few times. Yum. :rolleyes: Who needs to even eat afterwards?

Edited by Carrot Top (log)
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Poll

Which food comes closest to a spiritual experience when consumed in everyday life?

Chocolate

Bacon cheeseburger

Chicken soup

Bread

Wine

Pastry

Tofu

Coffee

Peanut butter

Fruit

(You can take the quiz to find the results at Beliefnet - it's on the right-hand lower side of the page linked. . .

(voted)

[X] Bread :smile:

(viewed results)

[X] BREAD 9%! :shock:

SB (what's wrong with these people! :angry: )

I almost voted for chicken soup, but then got all high-minded and long-winded and instead voted for fruit, as there are so many varieties and it is *so close to nature* (sic).

I can not imagine having a spiritual experience eating tofu, but who knows. Maybe if it were made into a sauce, worthy of licking. If anyone has such a recipe, it would be interesting to try. . . :huh:

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At Café Campagne in Seattle:

Oeufs en meurette

Two poached eggs served on garlic croutons with pearl onions, bacon and champignons in a red wine and foie gras sauce served with pommes frîtes

The sauce is veal demi base finished with a fois gras butter. It has an incredible mouthfeel - sexy and velvety.

Sigh :wub:

"Unleash the sheep!" mamster

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When I am dining out I have no hesitation in asking for a slice of bread for the sauce mopping. Let's face it - a fork is not the instrument of choice! Chefs don't spend hours making delicious sauces and gravies just to have them come back to the kitchen. I love watching others round a table follow suit once someone takes the "mop up" initiative.

And when it comes to raw oysters which are often served with separate dipping sauces, I just pour any remaining oyster juices into one shell and slurp. Discreetly, of course.

Website: http://cookingdownunder.com

Blog: http://cookingdownunder.com/blog

Twitter: @patinoz

The floggings will continue until morale improves

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In much of France it is fairly well taken for granted that to finish off a sauce:

(a) In a working person's restaurant, you simply break off a chunk of bread and use your fingers to dip it into the sauce and then pop it into your mouth

(b) In a bourgeois restaurant, you break off the chunk of bread, impale it on a fork and use that to dip into the sauce

© In a haute-bourgeois restaurant, you cut the bread with a knife, impale it on a fork and only then use that to dip into the sauce

(d) In a pretentious restaurant and when pretentious people you behave as the haute-bourgeois do

(e) In a truly fine restaurant you break off a chunk of bread and use your fingers to dip it into the sauce and then pop it into your mouth.

Now there must be a moral to that, but I'm sure it's far too socio-political for a culinary forum.

As to actually licking the plate, well, that is best left to your dog who is resting quietly on the floor near your feet.

Edited by Daniel Rogov (log)
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As to actually licking the plate, well, that is best left to your dog who is resting quietly on the floor near your feet.

Yiddish proverb: A man should lick if only to satisfy his curiosity.

I may have heard that wrong, true. It may have been "live" not "lick". Live, lick, live, lick, what's the difference.

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Yiddish proverb: A man should lick if only to satisfy his curiosity.

I may have heard that wrong, true. It may have been "live" not "lick". Live, lick, live, lick, what's the difference.

It's any easy mistake to make: lebn/lekn.

SBeker (pardon my Yiddish :wacko: )

Edited by srhcb (log)
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:huh:

Nobody's mentioned sopping up the Bearnaise sauce after the steak's gone.

Then again: maybe all their Bearnaise is gloriously gone (on mushrooms! On asparagus! On bread or potatoes!) by that time too.

:biggrin:

Me, I vote for the joyride every time.

-- 2/19/2004

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:huh:

Nobody's mentioned sopping up the Bearnaise sauce after the steak's gone.

Then again:  maybe all their Bearnaise is gloriously gone (on mushrooms! On asparagus! On bread or potatoes!) by that time too.

:biggrin:

Sitting in my physics class many many years ago i listened to some proffesor chatting on about Einstein and others with reference to all that they gave to the world of science and mankind. As i drifted off i couldn't help thinking how the hell did somebody invent Bearnaise? one of the most significant inventions ever. To taste a slightly chilled Bearnaise with real thick english chips (fries) is sublime, the chilled butter emulsion begins to split, the tarragon and vinegar edge to the fore the hot crispy potato mound softens in the mouth then to cap it off a mouthful of good quality burgungy bringd the whole experience to a crescendo.

In terms of bread to mop up sauce living in France a number of the decent restos provide a sauce spoon as part of the cutlery, though i do prefer bread!

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Call me silly but I would say that if you are serving a sauce and it doesn't make you want to sop it all up, then your sauce needs work. The first thing that comes to my head is the jus that I make, when I do my 5 hour slow roast chicken, which makes my wife swoon.

Details here? How do you do a "5 hour slow roast chicken" without overcooking it, and what additional steps do you take to produce this swoonjus?

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...To taste a slightly chilled Bearnaise with real thick english chips (fries) is sublime, the chilled butter emulsion begins to split, the tarragon and vinegar edge to the fore the hot crispy potato mound softens in the mouth then to cap it off a mouthful of good quality burgungy bringd the whole experience to a crescendo...

That sounds like the best damn thing I've heard of in ages... I've only ever used Bearnaise with steaks, but damn... I feel like Jules in Pulp Fiction now, 'cept nevermind the mayo. I'm doing it, fries with Bearnaise damnit, I'm doing that one -- that's all there's to it.

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...To taste a slightly chilled Bearnaise with real thick english chips (fries) is sublime, the chilled butter emulsion begins to split, the tarragon and vinegar edge to the fore the hot crispy potato mound softens in the mouth then to cap it off a mouthful of good quality burgungy bringd the whole experience to a crescendo...

That sounds like the best damn thing I've heard of in ages... I've only ever used Bearnaise with steaks, but damn... I feel like Jules in Pulp Fiction now, 'cept nevermind the mayo. I'm doing it, fries with Bearnaise damnit, I'm doing that one -- that's all there's to it.

At a potluck barbecue this past summer, one of our friends whipped up a batch of bearnaise into which we were to dip quickly blanched asparagus spears. Lemme tell you, the bearnaise barely made it to the table. We started dipping chunks of a rustic peasant baguette into it when someone reached into the bowl of Kettle Chips on the counter and took a scoop of the sauce. Trashy decadence at its best... or worst!

Joie Alvaro Kent

"I like rice. Rice is great if you're hungry and want 2,000 of something." ~ Mitch Hedberg

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This thread reminds me of the morels with sauce Colbert that I swooned over at Parkside Restaurant late last summer. Forget sopping... had no one been looking, I would've picked up the plate and licked it clean! :rolleyes:

Joie Alvaro Kent

"I like rice. Rice is great if you're hungry and want 2,000 of something." ~ Mitch Hedberg

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  • 2 weeks later...

Oh my...... This meal I just shared last night with 3 other eGulleteers at Mandoline in Philadelphia..... One of the dishes was a filet mignon topped with...... a foie gras croquette! When Tarte Tatin cut into it to divide it among the four of us, melted foie gras poured out over the filet. While not initially intended as a sauce, I guess, melting made it so and I sure wouldn't have minded licking that plate! :raz:

"Fat is money." (Per a cracklings maker shown on Dirty Jobs.)
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not a sauce, but I love the innards and the eggs in blue crabs. I like to spread the mustard and the eggs on a slice of good sourdough bread.

I was watching something on tv the other day where people were eating blue crabs. In the carnage where tons and tons of delicious eggs. How can you waste such a delicious delicacy?

BEARS, BEETS, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA
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In restaurants, my favorite was lobster with black bean sauce. My brother and I once were sopping the last bits of sauce with rice that — much to mom’s embarrassment — the waiter, thinking we were still hungry, took pity on us and brought us a bowl of soup. No actual licking though. Mom would have killed us for that.

But at home, plate licking was the norm for us. My favorite were the dregs from egg foo young and string beans in fu yee sauce. Once again, my brother and I would fight over those last drops, until one of us would grab the plate and proceed to lick it, thus ensuring that the other would not get it, and also receiving a chiding from Mom. Sometimes, she’d actually laugh at our antics and ask “where’s that plate made?” Dad took it as a compliment though. "Good cook, good cook!" he used to say.

Fast forward twenty or so years. I do everything short of licking the plate. Rice, bread, a spoon, I’ve even become quite adept at doing it with a fork. I’ve received comments from waitstaff ranging from “hmm…I see you’re a member of the clean plate club,” “I’ll tell the chef you didn’t like it.”, which I usually reply, “I’ll have the rest wrapped up to go,” or “there used to be a pattern on the plate.”

In the StudioKitchen days, most, if not all of Shola’s sauces merited plate licking. And since I wasn’t the only one, I had no qualms about licking the plate.

I’d almost forgotten about this thread until this past Thanksgiving. Mr. Duck’s cousin was trying to surreptitiously lick the last of the ice cream and cake from his plate. Until I caught him and started laughing.

Karen C.

"Oh, suddenly life’s fun, suddenly there’s a reason to get up in the morning – it’s called bacon!" - Sookie St. James

Travelogue: Ten days in Tuscany

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