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Weekend Book Giveaway: 'The Amateur Gourmet'
Thirty-odd years ago and my parents were selling the house and moving cross country. They had read that the smell of baking was conducive to making a sale, and so I was tasked with a daily routine of cookie prep (I was heavily into baking for a seven-year-old). On a particular day, I was told to double quantities, as there was a church fete coming up. Keenly, I doubled sugar, eggs, butter, and flavourings. But forgot to double the flour. Four shelves off cookie mix melted, dripped off the trays and filed the whole house with smoke. No sale that day. But lesson learnt.
How Do You Eat Your Bagel?
Forget the salmon and cheese - have a proper East London beigel loaded with thickly sliced hot salt beef and hot, sweet mustard.
I Took the Locavore Challenge (Sort of)
Pedants corner (that is in no way intended to denigrate a valid commentary on the locavore fad) - it is MaldOn salt : www.maldonsalt.co.uk
It appears to be a common mispelling, however, as can be seen to it's best effect here: http://www.amazon.com/8-5-oz-Malden-Sea-Salt/dp/B0000U2R1A
Maldon salt comes from Essex, so is roughly equivalent in terms of UK geographical prejudice to, say, Coney Island salt.
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Stichelton: Raw-Milk Stilton
Good call, Jamie. I've recently been so engrossed in Serious Eats and a number of other US based food blogs (more exciting than most UK food media - mainly due to the openness, knowledge and enthusiasm of the writers) that this had passed me by. I shall be off to Neals Yard tomorrow.
Weekend Book Giveaway: 'The Amateur Gourmet'
Thirty-odd years ago and my parents were selling the house and moving cross country. They had read that the smell of baking was conducive to making a sale, and so I was tasked with a daily routine of cookie prep (I was heavily into baking for a seven-year-old). On a particular day, I was told to double quantities, as there was a church fete coming up. Keenly, I doubled sugar, eggs, butter, and flavourings. But forgot to double the flour. Four shelves off cookie mix melted, dripped off the trays and filed the whole house with smoke. No sale that day. But lesson learnt.
How Do You Eat Your Bagel?
Forget the salmon and cheese - have a proper East London beigel loaded with thickly sliced hot salt beef and hot, sweet mustard.
I Took the Locavore Challenge (Sort of)
Pedants corner (that is in no way intended to denigrate a valid commentary on the locavore fad) - it is MaldOn salt : www.maldonsalt.co.uk
It appears to be a common mispelling, however, as can be seen to it's best effect here: http://www.amazon.com/8-5-oz-Malden-Sea-Salt/dp/B0000U2R1A
Maldon salt comes from Essex, so is roughly equivalent in terms of UK geographical prejudice to, say, Coney Island salt.
Fightin' Words on Vodka
Mrs Godstar has been going to Poland a lot on business recently, and is kind enough to bring me plenty of vodka (keeps me subdued enough to not complain about her TV obsessions). There is a real difference to be found - a couple of brands are smooth enough to sip at room temperature, while others are as grim as the main international brands. As yet, I haven't discovered a Ukrainian horilka that is palatable, and the occasional Bulgarian rakia that is pleasant tends to be kerosene next time I buy it - consistency is not a Bulgarian strongpoint. If I may suggest, have something with a little flavour - Balkan plum firewaters can be such fun, my personal favourite so far being Zuta Osa (the yellow wasp) from Serbia. Happy drinking.
Five Things to Know When Buying Fish
What is the prevalence of farmed fish in the US? Farmed salmon in the UK is the new battery chicken - flabby from packed holding tanks/nets/cages, dyed flesh - no pink plankton to eat, toxic with heavy metals and other fat soluble nasties, and hugely polluting, both with their fecal matter and the vast quantities of anti-parasitic drugs and antibiotics needed to keep them in one piece. Taste and texture are very poor, too. Mind you, 3/4 of the population only eat fish if its skinless fillets in orange crumb.
BTW - the cycling fish comes from a feminist slogan (either Gloria Steinem or an apocryphal graffito) and was probably best refuted in the Guinness television advert from 1996 - http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=KTT2-TNuegM
The Best Fresh Tomato Recipes: What Are Yours?
Small tomatoes I confit in olive oil with a ridiculous amount of garlic (in its skin, and then extract the cloves and squeeze out to taste) - this is the basis for numerous pasta sauces - add pepper, chili, cheese, anchovies, crab, greens, or nothing.
Big ones I slice thinly, salt, lots of pepper, and at the last second some strong vinegar (even industrial chip shop malt vinegar works fine - it was what my Nan used to use in Mamnchester in the 1930's) and sandwich on brown bread.
It's Like KFC, But Not
I used to live near the MFC (bottom left in your picture) - we referred to it as MutherF***in;Chicken. The UK is full of these places, each more unpleasant than the next. It's not all Ramsey and Blumenthal.
What's your favourite London restaurant?
Assuming you mean London, England, then I would always recommend St John Smithfield branch. On a budget, go to Kingsland Road for Vietnamese (Song Que is my preference) or north to Highbury/Hackney/Dalston for Turkish - there are too many greats to list and the exploration is part of the fun.
How Do You Eat Your Bagel?
I come from Brooklyn, where one of my fondest childhood memories is the daily walk I took with my father and uncle to the neighborhood bagel bakery (in Boro Park).
I now live in California, after living 20 years in Massachusetts. I have never been able to find a Brooklyn-style bagel, and I wonder if they still exist.
My childhood bagels were hard and chewy, there was no way to make a sandwich from them. I ate them radially, schmearing the exposed end with cream cheese and eating my way around.
At the company cafeteria today, everyone was talking about bagels, and all but one person laughed at me for eating bagels the way I did. The one person who concurred with me, was a Bulgarian. He was a true Bagel maven.
Stichelton: Raw-Milk Stilton
You can also order it from the Cheese Shop in Healdsburg, run by the brilliant Doralice Handal. I just got my custom cheese club order today, containing a half pound of Stichelton - yum!!! I'm British myself and though I have consumed much stilton in my life, have not yet tried the raw version. Can't wait...
Weekend Book Giveaway: 'The Amateur Gourmet'
Before mastering the art of basic pastry dough, I attempted a plum tart. I made the dough, thinking all was well-and-good, and put it in the fridge to chill. Then, I made the plum filling with fresh greenmarket plums. It looked, smelled, and tasted wickedly delicious. But, when the time came to assemble the thing...the dough was horrendeous.
I ended up trashing the whole thing and making a lousy plum cake.
Drat!
Weekend Book Giveaway: 'The Amateur Gourmet'
Way back when I first started cooking at home, my wife and I made a recipe out of Fine Cooking magazine. It was a pretty simple pasta dish with cheese, crushed tomatoes, garlic, italian sausage, and pasta. Pretty simple stuff.
This time I decide I'm going to make it myself and surprise her after a hard day at work. I survey the recipe, make at the grocery list and procure the said items.
All fired up, I start measuring out all of the ingredients. Took the sausage out of the casing, get the water ready for the pasta, open up the crushed tomatoes, and mince four cloves of garlic.
So I'm mincing, and mincing, and mincing. True, I was very new to the kitchen so my knife skills weren't that good. Dude, this is taking forever! How do these old Italian women stand this? No wonder they spend all day in the kitchen, they're mincing garlic! I bet you this operation took an hour. My eyes are on fire, my fingers stink, and I'm wondering why I even embarked on this ill-conceived journey.
I finally get everything combined and it looks just like the picture in the magazine. With a bag of iceburg lettuce and the best frozen garlic bread $2 could buy, dinner was now served. My wife was pleasantly surprised by my motivation to cook dinner. We sit down and eat.
I take a bite.
She takes a bite.
"Whoah! What in the hell is that?" she said (and I thought).
"That's got some serious garlic in it! How much did the recipe call for?", she asked.
"Four cloves, and it took forever to mince.", I replied.
"What took so long?", she wondered.
I go over to the garbage I show her the leftover garlic skins.
"Oh, wait a minute.", I said
I will conclude this story by saying the whole dinner went in the trash and I now know the difference between a clove and bulb of garlic.
Stichelton: Raw-Milk Stilton
Stichelton is in fact delicious and distinct from Stilton, though I have to admit I prefer the latter most of time. I sell it at Cowgirl Creamery in Washington DC and I used to sell it at DiBruno's in Philly. The fact that this cheese arrives in the US in excellent condition is testament to Neal's Yard's standard of quality.
Weekend Book Giveaway: 'The Amateur Gourmet'
I've had my fair share of culinary disasters, but I really want to share my favourite family story, and that belongs to my Dad. Back in the early 90s when he couldn't cook, my Mum went away for the weekend.
Dad 'made' my sister and I quiche which he must have found in the very bottom of our chest freezer. It was rank... even after 30 mins in the over it was basically a pastry case with raw egg and bits of ham floating around inside.
Being just into my teens and newly aware of things like food poisoning and salmonella, I refused to eat it on safety grounds. My younger sister did likewise. My normally mild-mannered Dad had obviously had a hard day looking after the pair of us and blew his top, saying we always ate what Mum put in front of us (well yeah, that was cooked...!) and banning us from leaving the table until we'd cleaned our plates.
Terrified of dying due to consumption of runny quiche and unable to call Mum in the days before mobile phones, we sat there with tear streaked faces for two hours until Dad admitted defeat and sent us to bed.
The next day Mum returned and the second she got through the door I ran out and shouted: 'Mum, quiche isn't supposed to be runny, IS it?' Mum just turned to Dad, raised one eyebrow and said: 'What have you done now?!'
These days, my Dad is a thoroughly modern man who makes a mean spaghetti carbonara. But we like to remind him often of the worst weekend of our teens and 'the day he nearly killed us with his cooking' :o)
Weekend Book Giveaway: 'The Amateur Gourmet'
I was trying to bake Nigella Lawson's Chocolate Guiness Cake for an event at work. One of the steps is to cook the Guinness on the stovetop, along with butter and sugar. Unfortunately, I misread the recipe and made the rest of the batter in the pot on the stovetop. it started to cook, and after baking, the cake was filled with odd-tasting chunks. it was a total loss. Bad news.
Weekend Book Giveaway: 'The Amateur Gourmet'
I've loved to cook since an early age. I remember back when I was still in elementary school, I decided to try to create one of my Dad's favorite pies, pecan pie, for his birthday. It was the first pie I'd ever made on my own, but it sounded pretty easy. Got the pie crust done, the filling was in and I spent oodles of time getting the pecans to look just right on top of the pie.
Halfway through the baking cycle, I smelled the most horrible smell and entered a completely smoke-filled kitchen. My Mom and Dad kicked in from there and got the "pie" out of the oven. When the smoke cleared, we realized what I had done. I had used a pie tin that had originally house a pie purchased from the bakery that HAD HOLES PUNCHED IN THE BOTTOM OF IT! All of the pecan pie filling (except the nuts) had seeped right through the crust and had become a lump of charcoal completely stuck to the bottom of the oven.
Let's add insult to injury -- this was before self-cleaning ovens were available. Nuff said.
Weekend Book Giveaway: 'The Amateur Gourmet'
This weekend, we made a Black Forest Cake for an Octoberfest party. Unfortunately, the humidity got the best of the cake and the layers started to slide around. Not one of our best cakes...
Weekend Book Giveaway: 'The Amateur Gourmet'
a food disaster haiku:
home alone- first time!
.....gray macaroni and cheese!!!?!
hello garbage bin!
Weekend Book Giveaway: 'The Amateur Gourmet'
My absolute worst cooking disaster was back almost 30 years ago when I was a new bride just beginning to cook. Up until then, Mom had done all the day-to-day cooking, and there's just so many hotdogs you can eat. I had received a crock pot as a wedding gift, along with it's little recipe booklet. Hmmm. Cauliflour soup. Sounded pretty good, and within my skills range. Put everything in in the morning, and turned the pot on. Came home after work, expecting great things. Oh no. The aroma wafting under the door was not at all pleasant. The entire apartment reeked of rotten onions. I still use the crock pot, but that little recipe book went right into the garbage, along with all that soup.
Weekend Book Giveaway: 'The Amateur Gourmet'
My worst cooking disaster was technically a baking disaster. I was making key lime cheesecake bars, which sound delicious but which were HORRIBLE. Of course part of this was probably my fault because I forgot to shake up the key lime juice before adding it to the batter. The other parts that made it horrible include a pretzel crust and pistachio topping. I took a bite when they were ready and didn't like it but thought maybe my husband would still like it as he's less of a picky eater. When he got home he dug right in and then looked shocked. He couldn't decide whether to spit it out and risk offending me or to swallow it and deal with the pain. In the end, I told him it was OK if he didn't like them because I didn't either. We threw out the rest of the pan and vowed never to try that recipe again.
Weekend Book Giveaway: 'The Amateur Gourmet'
It was two weeks before we were closing on our house - in a market where we were lucky to even have someone to make an offer - I decide to make a bag of popcorn in the microwave. I was glad I smelled the smoke before the flames started licking at the cabinets. It took a fire extinguisher to get out all the flames. Popcorn makes really good fuel - and smells really, really bad for a couple of weeks. I will never, ever, ever cook in a kitchen without a little red canister - I think it saved my house! Luckily, we sold the house and we're much more careful about popping popcorn.
Weekend Book Giveaway: 'The Amateur Gourmet'
My oven had accumulated lots of little bits of food in the bottom over the months. I didn't realize how much had accumulated until I had 15 people over for a pizza party dinner and the fire alarm went off relentlessly. There was no way to turn it off because I live in a loft with 13 foot cielings. Everyone's ears were pierced and we had no dinner because there was no othher way to bake the pizzas!
Weekend Book Giveaway: 'The Amateur Gourmet'
my mom had an easy peesy recipe for making some ribs with soy sauce, vinegar, rice wine, and sugar. it was something like three parts vinegar and two parts sugar.
when it was cooked and i eagerly dug in to discover that i forgot the sugar and it was as if i just braised something in rice vinegar.
that first bite caused me to make a face like what you saw on those "bitter-beer-face" commercials. good times.
Weekend Book Giveaway: 'The Amateur Gourmet'
That would be mashed potatoes. My little brother phoned halfway through the whipping process. After I came back to the pan, I thought I'd better add more milk as they seemed kind of thicker than usual. Wow, and kind of sticky. More milk. Erm, more glueish. Well, make lemonade, right? I scraped the potato mixture into a baking dish, dotted with a little butter, sprinkled paprika for a "this was intentional" look of Jacketless Twice Baked Potatoes. Um, after baking for 30 minutes, not so much. Instead, that would be wallpaper paste. Maybe spackle. Really REALLY hard to clean up, and certainly not edible. Nobody distracts me during mashed potato preparation anymore.
Weekend Book Giveaway: 'The Amateur Gourmet'
Let's see, SO many to chose from! How about the time I cooked a spaghetti squash in the microwave WHOLE! I knew that I had to let the steam escape and punctured the squash several times with a knife. But evidently this was not enough. I had walked out of the kitchen and I heard what sounded like a small explosion. The spaghetti squash had burst and blew open the door to the microwave, covering every surface of my small kitchen to include the ceiling with "spaghetti". It is amazing how much surface area on squash can cover! I cleaned up spaghetti squash for WEEKS! Now I know to CUT the squash in have before microwaving.
Weekend Book Giveaway: 'The Amateur Gourmet'
I cooked dinner for my dad and I a couple months before I got married. I was inspired to make home made bisquits. I pulled them out of the oven and they looked great, they just didn't raise at all. Undeterred, I put them in a basket and set them on the table when it was time to eat. I told my dad proudly that I made dinner all myself. He looked at the basket of bisquits and said "it looks like you made cookies for dessert"! We laughed when I told him that they were supposed to be light, fluffy bisquits!
I make awesome bisquits now and my dad and I still giggle!
Weekend Book Giveaway: 'The Amateur Gourmet'
I consider myself to be a very proficient pastry chef. So imagine my embarrassment when I went to make a meringue buttercream for a friend's birthday cake but kept coming up with egg white and butter soup. My apt was scorching hot and I couldn't cool it down (AC was busted) and my egg whites wouldn't whip up properly. Keep in mind that I'm already 20 minutes late to her birthday party and she lives a half hour away. I made another batch but the same thing happened. I had no choice but to scrap the buttercream and just slap some melted white chocolate all over the cake. It looked horrible, like something a 5 year old would make. Luckily for me, I was able to slice and serve the cake without anyone seeing the entire thing. So I wasn't publicly embarrassed, but I was embarrassed nonetheless.
Weekend Book Giveaway: 'The Amateur Gourmet'
How many people does it take to cook hamburgers on a grill?
Five.
And one to order Pizza.
Too much lighter fluid, wet charcoals. Someone had the bright idea to put them under the broiler in the oven. Grease fire, and then an oven filled with flour.
The pizza was only o.k.
Weekend Book Giveaway: 'The Amateur Gourmet'
Yet another taco disaster! I came home from my high school job of cooking at a senior center to find all the fixin's for soft tacos left out for me by my parents, who were out attending the local PTA meeting. I fired up the wok with hot oil but spilled salsa all over my work top. I left the kitchen to put my clothes in the washer...a couple of minutes later my dog came running to find me, barking like Lassie. I ran back to the kitchen to find all the wood cabinets up in flames from the grease fire. I ran to the wash room, grabbed as many towels as I could find, threw them on top of the wok and frantically beat the living daylights out of the cabinet fire. I successfully got the fire out, but turned around to see four feet of thick, black, greasy smoke filling up the entire first floor of the house. I opened up all the windows and doors, got the house fans out and blew the smoke out of the house. I called up the fire dept and had them check out the house for any potential problems. Needless to say, I did not have an appetite for soft tacos anymore. Ever.
Weekend Book Giveaway: 'The Amateur Gourmet'
The very first thanksgiving dinner I ever did myself. 10 lb frozen turkey, in the oven for the prescribed ammount of time, correct temp. 100% by the book. Except I forgot to thaw it first... I was so proud until a tried to slice into a perfectly browned, frozen solid bird.
Weekend Book Giveaway: 'The Amateur Gourmet'
Starting the kitchen on fire by putting an oven mitt on a hot burner during Homecoming Weekend at college on "taco night" in our apartment. Subsequently knocking out power for the 3 apartments that made up our house, and highly irritating our many houseguests trying to get ready to go out for the night.
Weekend Book Giveaway: 'The Amateur Gourmet'
the worst was probably the time i attempted a savory shrimp flan seasoned with fish sauce. The flavor was off, and the flan was an overcooked mess.
Weekend Book Giveaway: 'The Amateur Gourmet'
It's hard to determine the worst (or, in retrospect, funniest). There was the time that the cayenne was substitured for the sweet paprika for the Paprikosh. Oof! Then there was the poptart in the toaster oven incident in Somerville MA, in which my sweetie had put the strawberry unfrosted toaster pastries in to toast while a friend called from out of town, the pastries started to burn and flame (!) and she called for me to help -- and my friend Gary refused to get out the damn phone "but-but-I have more to say!". *oy* So I unplugged the toaster oven and ran the whole thing out onto the front porch and shoveled show into it!
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Good call, Jamie. I've recently been so engrossed in Serious Eats and a number of other US based food blogs (more exciting than most UK food media - mainly due to the openness, knowledge and enthusiasm of the writers) that this had passed me by. I shall be off to Neals Yard tomorrow.