My least favorite cookbook in my collection is ________.
I have a book called "Italian Cooking," by Mary Reynolds. I can't stand it. It seeks to go by region around Italy with a sampling of dishes, and it just doesn't work. Doesn't work. No workee.
Serious Eater Profile
Get to Know a Serious Eater.
TikiPundit's Profile
The Ten Most Recent Comments By TikiPundit
If the restaurant is so nice, why such small portions?
Yes, I'd rather not leave a restaurant hungry. That said, a small portion, bursting with flavor, is more satisfying to me than a humongous portion of gelatinous crap.
Smaller is better. If it's exquisite tasting, wait 20 minutes before eating anything else. Your stomach, your arteries and your psyche will thank you.
Cause and Effect
1. Supermarket, local (Mexican markets), fruit & veggie stands
2. Sometimes. Have a problem with what the FDA allows to be called "organic."
3. Will purchase organic food when it is better defined as to the conditions under which organic food is produced
4. No. No change in food purchases due to prices.
5. Not in NYC.
6. West TX, by Gawd. Closer to LA than Dallas, fer a fact.
Artisan: Can it also be Corporate?
Interesting post. Artisan certainly cannot be used in my nearby chain grocery store to describe their bread, though they do. The dough is the same for every variation of bread they bake (do they make the dough there, or get it "ready to bake" off a truck? I don't want to ask). They have all these Old World names, the most offensive of which is Pugliese. Hell, I lived in Puglia and never saw bread like that. Grr.
Sorry for the rant. I'm sensitive about bread, its ingredients and the origins of it in all its mighty glory, and seeing it packaged for marketing purposes in an antiseptic, 24/7 chain store environment just slays me. Especially when this town has two supremely authentic German bakeries that remain "small businesses" because of the big chain's "artisan bread."
It's minimum-wage artisanship, a charade, really.
New ideas for a whole chicken.
Well, some say the best way to test a new cook in a kitchen is to have her/him roast a chicken. And with that... see this URL...
Bland soup - can't figure out why
Can I suggest something from the Southwest? Lime juice. It's a good salt substitute and can bring a dish to life (OK, perhaps it works only in the hot desert).
Check out these ingredients -- though beef does add more punch to the broth than chicken would.
This example is from allrecipes at
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Caldo-De-Res-Beef-Soup/Detail.aspx
1 pound beef
1 tomato, quartered
2 potatoes, cubed
1 onion, chopped
3 carrots, chopped
1/2 medium head cabbage, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
6 teaspoons chopped fresh cilantro
1 tablespoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
2 fluid ounces fresh lime juice
Enhanced chicken?
@renzata: brined or injected?
@kjgibson: yep, I think so too.
It's a small world, or else Serious Eats readers have ESP. I was just mildly complaining (OK, bitching) today about trying to find a decent chicken that did not have this injection process in its life & death process. Hard to find, unless you buy frozen around these parts.
Time to raise chickens, both for fresh and cheap eggs and control over what goes into them before they go into your stomach!
Desert Island Food
Boy howdy, as a son of the Islands, and a fan of plate lunch, I'd have to say that:
1) a plate lunch can contain any mix of protein and carbs you can imagine, and if you think of it, it's probably already been done
and,
2) I'd want the biggest, most diverse plate lunch ever created, delivered to my heiau, three times a day!
What childhood food do you wish they still made?
A guy came into work the other day declaring that Haribo has stopped making gummi bears. I'd miss those, if that were true.
Can't find anything saying it's true, and he's crazy half the time anyway.
But I'd really miss those, if it were true. But it's not. And he's crazy half the time. The other half of the time, he's eating gummi bears.
I work in a strange place. Creative, but strange.
Lamb and Mutton
The lack of lamb is disappointing (don't really care for mutton). I really don't understand it. You can get chicken with water or broth injected into it from a factory farm, which reduces taste and makes cutting a chore, but a decent lamb -- so fabulously tasty -- is nearly impossible to find for most folks.
Responses to Comments by TikiPundit
Cause and Effect
Not to interrupt this very good post but, what and where is Whole Foods? Also, just out of curiosity blankplate, please share with me how you feed 3 people for a week for $60, I live in Philadelphia, not too far from you, and I must be doing something wrong.
If the restaurant is so nice, why such small portions?
Most chefs I know give portions that are really too big for one person to eat at one meal. However, I have encountered the ones you're talking about. Given a choice, though, I would rather leave a meal so memorable I would like more, but satisifed so as to not eat more.
If the restaurant is so nice, why such small portions?
And Bravian, there CAN be a middle ground between high quality, well thought out food presented in a portion that should satisfy the average dinner goer and "food shoveling" at the nearest Applebees. Ugh.
If the restaurant is so nice, why such small portions?
As long as I don't go home hungry (which I never have been from a chef's tasting menu e.g per se, daniel, ramsay, eleven madison park, bouley) I'm fine.
There are times when small to very small portions are fine and expected (chef tasting menus).
And then there are times when it's just haughty, snobby, off putting, and a rip-off (the only place that comes to mind is TAILOR).
My least favorite cookbook in my collection is ________.
"Flavor" by Rocco DiSpirito. It was a gift from my mother. Unfortunately, very few of the recipes appeal to me (although the photos are gorgeous).
If the restaurant is so nice, why such small portions?
I know what you mean, I've left some very expensive dinners hoping that my favorite pizza parlor is still open so that I could supplement my $200 dinner with a $2 slice.
However, I know that what you pay at a restaurant reflects more than just the food on your plate. That $2 slice was almost as filling as that $200 dinner, but it also took about 3 minutes from ordering to biting whereas the expensive dinner took about 3 hours from cocktails to cordials. The pizza was a simple, albeit delicious, cheese pizza; whereas my dinner earlier included fresh oysters, some caviar, some foie, dover sole, cheese & salad courses, dessert and coffee. The pizza was served on a white paper plate while the multiple courses at 1 North were served on fine china (sorry I didn't pick up the plate to see if it was Limoges or Noritake, but I was tempted--LOL) with appropriate silverware for each course and appropriate stemware with each wine pairing. Also at the pizza parlor there is a steady stream of carry out and delivery orders, the tables turn within the hour; whereas at 1 North, the dining room will seat about 55-60 at once and it is unlikely they will have a full second seating. All this and I haven't mentioned the staff and the time the staff spends with you or doing things for you.
And the kicker is that since I know both the pizza parlor owner and the French restaurant owner, I know that the pizza parlor clears more profit than the French restaurant.
Yes, we go to restaurants to eat, but to the point, we go to fine restaurants to dine. The dining experience is more than just eating.
If the restaurant is so nice, why such small portions?
back in the day my parents liked to celebrate special occasions at this fancy-pants hotel by our house. the restaurant opened with a tapas menu, and everything was exquisite. the chef said that was his favorite way to cook, because after a few bites, you're no longer tasting the food but just eating to be full. but if you keep eating different things, you get to still enjoy tasting new things.
My least favorite cookbook in my collection is ________.
Rachael Ray's "365 Days-No Repeats and Martha Stewart
My least favorite cookbook in my collection is ________.
This is so funny bc just this morning my husband said, "What are you doning--trying to memorize every recipe?" (I was reading The Joy of Cooking) I had to remind him that I like to read my cookbooks like novels sometimes. Other times I use them for reference and/or inspiration.
My least favorite cookbooks have all been gifts: RR's stuff, "A Pocketful of Rice," Wine Lover's Cookbook (or something like that). Years before RR became a marketer's dream, one of my girlfriends raved about RR's cookbooks, I must have said something to indicate a desire for them bc the next week when she & her hubby came over for dinner she presented me with two RR cookbooks. I "read" them like I read all my cookbooks and while her voice is very evident the recipes didn't really appeal to me and so I've never drawn inspiration from nor referenced her work. I didn't get rid of them during "The Great Cookbook Purge of 2007" prior to my "Big Move to Indy" bc they came from dear friends (who I miss terribly). So, for sentimental reasons I will keep them.
If the restaurant is so nice, why such small portions?
...oh, while my mother and I brought home leftovers. I was STUFFED.
Website:
Location: Hawai'i
About: Friendly local Hawai'ian god.
Favorite foods: Poke, lomi lomi, any kind sashimi, laulau, rice, any kind bento, miso, Thai, good dim sum, French (yes, French), Greek, some Italian, American pizzas (not European), and better believe cheeseburgers.
Last bite on earth: Sashimi at the beach.