And I will raise you back mozzarella cheese. The most tasteless pasty glob of silly putty stuff on earth. And that stupid so-called salad of tomato and mozzerella and basil is an abomination. Flame away mozzerella lovers but I will put any good genuine fromage up against it any day and twice on Sundays.
HEY! That’s my favorite ketchup. Cooks Illustrated tasters agree (although, to be honest, I’m often :dubious: with their and America’s Test Kitchen’s taste tests. I just happen to agree with their assessment of Hunts on this one.)
Isn’t that coconut? I love those!!
Are you referring to real, buffalo-milk mozzarella, or the stuff that’s usually spread over American pizza pies? :dubious: I recently made some meatball sandwiches using the latter, and it basically melted like candle wax. Real mozarrella, on the other hand, is quite nice (though a bit bland on its own).
I once worked in a pizza place where the recipe called for a mixture of low-fat and regular cow’s milk mozzarella. My immediate response was “Why bother?” 
The worst part about prepackaged sandwiches is there have been times, like when trapped in the airport for example, when I will buy one even though I know they’re awful! They’ll look okay, and I’ll say to myself, “Well maybe this one isn’t dry and foul tasting,” but of course it is. Every single time!
Well I wouldn’t go so far as to say I *like *7-11 food, but it’s served a purpose before. Thankfully my late night food options are much better these days than they were 10 years ago.
I honestly think a good mozzarella is best enjoyed on its own with a little bit of olive oil, perhaps. Maybe some tomato and basil (for a caprese salad). Most of the fresh stuff you find swimming in brine in the grocery store isn’t that great and needs more, but the first time I had a proper buffalo mozzarella, I was floored by its fresh, milky flavor. It just tasted like the essence of fresh milk, and that wonderful, spongy, texture.
I love mozzarella. Hate super-sharp cheese.
Must have been right out of the pot. I’ve seen Gordon Ramsey, et al., actually making fresh mozzarella on a stovetop, but have yet to try it myself. Maybe I’ll give it a shot over my holiday break.
It’s actually really easy. It does take some time and work though, but it’s not too bad and the payoff is totally worth it.
No, it wasn’t right out of the pot. Homemade mozzarella is not difficult, but if you just use grocery store bought milk, it doesn’t taste like much. Anyone who know the difference between farm milk and grocery milk knows what I mean.
I’ll have to see if I can find farm-fresh milk (buffalo or cow) anywhere in Toronto. I doubt it’s available.
Yeah, raw milk is the way to go. I’ve made a number of cheeses from regular store-bought milk and, while it’s fun, it really does lack a bit in the flavor department. Mozzarella, especially, is so fresh and uncomplicated that your really need milk with good flavor to start with. That said, it’s worth trying it with whatever milk you can get your hands on.
The comments about those “7-11” hotdogs stirred my memory:
Apoo : “Homer, you are the only one that eats those hotdogs”!
I always wondered how long they stated in those heated display cases-must have caused many cases of food poisoning
I eat the spicy big bite sober all the time. It’s probably my only vice aside from all of my other vices.
I used to work in a 7-11 in the early 90s. I think they got pulled at either 2 or 4 hours, I’m not sure.
I hated that roller cooker. Major PITA to clean.
I don’t know about 7-11, but I still remember a time when the spouse and I were at Gen Con back when it was in Milwaukee and we walked into a no-name convenience store looking for gamer munchies. The place had a weird icky smell (kind of like they had a body stashed somewhere nearby) but we figured we’d be safe with packaged snacks as long as we checked the dates on them.
Next to the register they had one of those hot-dog roller things that was occupied by what we could only describe as zombie hot dogs. I mean, these things were gray-green and looked like what your fingers look like when you spend a couple of hours in the bathtub. I have no idea how long they’d been there, but I can’t imagine anyone being hungry enough to buy one. They may have been the source of the smell, but we didn’t stick around long enough to determine this.
Yes, very much. (Also mince pie, plum pudding and any other strong flavored, fruity-spicy goodness.)
You were probably smelling the Nacho Paint. That stuff is vile coming out of the can, puky in the heater and nasty to clean up at the end of the day.
But (speaking of Milwaukee) I have never been able to understand Wisconsin “cheese”. It is flavorless crap. They eat these curd things not for the taste but because of the squeak when you bite into them. There is even a town that gave its name to a blend of pointless Monterrey Jack and insipid Wisconsin “Cheddar”, a cheese so inoffensive that they make hats out of it to wear to football games. Give me a good tangy Tillamook or Cabot, if I am eating artery cloggings, at least it should taste like something.
Yes, gumdrops. That’s what I get for trying to post at 2 AM.
Gumdrops, especially the mint ones, seem like the kind of thing grandmothers foist on children, but I stand corrected if you love them.
Gah! Speaking of places that don’t understand what cheese is, why does Chicago seem to think cheese is synonymous with Nacho Paint? (Love the term, by the way.) I once ordered cheese fries expecting to get cheese on top, only to find they had ruined perfectly good french fries with neon goo. Initially I thought, well all right, go to that place for the sandwiches, but skip the cheese fries. Then I noticed that every single place I went to served cheese fries with Nacho Paint! On one occasion, after finally having caught on, I asked the cashier if the cheese fries had cheese on them or cheese sauce. He responded confidently, without even blinking, that it was cheese. So I says, “I know, but is it, like, cheese cheese or that liquidy cheese?” Again, the cashier, certain that what they put on top of their fries is cheese, says it is cheese. “So you guys just shred the cheese on top?” I am told that it is melted cheese. Ah hmm. So the guy, apparently annoyed with me asking the same question over and over, shows me a small sample of bright orange paint that he had somehow mistaken for cheese. Yeah, so I skipped that part and just got regular fries. Fast forward to last week when I’m craving a sandwich and fries, ask the cashier at the sandwich shop around the corner if the cheese fries have cheese on them or cheese sauce. “It’s cheese, miss.” Unconvinced, I ask him if I could see the cheese they use, and as I see him approaching a pump I think, “Cheese does not come from a pump.” I decline their version of cheese and order the regular fries.
Goddamn it, Chicago, Nacho Paint is not cheese!