I happen to like whole wheat pasta just fine, and from what I gather it’s definitely healthier, but I can understand being turned off by the texture. But when you talked about flavor, you lost me. Pasta has flavor? I thought that was the sauce’s job. The pasta’s job is as a delivery system for the sauce.
I like yogurt, but I’ve never quite trusted it, and I find Greek yogurt even more suspicious, looking all congealed as it does, like what you would get if you left a bowl of milk sitting out for a couple of weeks. And no one’s ever been able to explain to me what Greek yogurt is—what makes it Greek, what’s different about it—except that doesn’t “Greek” mean “anal”? So I’ve never been able to give it a fair trial.
It’s not nearly so bizarre. They just use a particular set of cultures, and then once the yogurt is made, they strain it / de-water it. That’s it. Nothing particularly funky at all.
(For the record, fresh non-Greek style yogurt is kind of gelatinous and a little on the soupy side after it’s stirred, due to all the extra liquid within.)
Sour dough bread. Chefs worked for hundreds of generations to select and encourage active sweet-tasting yeasts. They traveled the world and brought them home and preserved them with loving hands, feeding and mixing and perfecting them to produce delicious lovely breads. Dropping them all for an older sour-tasting razor-crust producing throwback is not an improvement. And “crusty” is good; “brittle enough to produce a mouthful of shards” is not.
And OK, I get it, some folks like the sour, and want to connect with their peasant ancestors. Lovely, support them and provide the product they want. But do not put a loaf on the shelf and label it Ciabatta, or French loaf, or Italian loaf that tastes like you added a tablespoon of acetic acid to it.
Burning coffee beans and then selling them as “Gourmet.” I am especially floored by the Folgers “Black Silk.” These are the production errors that used to go into the dumpster.
Red onions in everything. Yes they are lovely and add a nice touch of color. But they also have a very specific high-sulfur flavor with a touch of the acrid to it; they are not to be used lightly and do not play well with mild flavors.
Yeah, I just checked at the local grocery store, and I noticed that Vlasic banana peppers come in both mild and hot. There apparently are hot banana peppers, so I’m assuming the hot product must be made from something like this. I don’t recall getting anything that hot except for Hungarian wax peppers (which as I said before are sometimes called banana peppers.) We do have fresh banana peppers at the grocery store, and they’re at somewhere I’d guess in the 500-1000 Scoville range. So there is a little kick, but not much, certainly not in the 5000-10000 range like those peppers.
The banana peppers I’m used to are the kinds at Subway or Quizno’s which are more vinegary than anything.
That’s one thing that I love about Chinese restaurants, none of that marketing crap. Even their native language is simple and to the point. Rice with vegetable…which vegetable? Who cares! Spicy beef…how is it prepared, what spices, what complimentary garnish? Who cares! Consider yourself lucky if the menu even has a photo of the dish.
I’ve heard that the texture has improved dramatically in the lsat few years; have you tried it recently? Most of the pasta we eat is whole-wheat, because it has more flavor and is healthier.
I’m on board with the anti-gluten-free movement, however. Seems like half the middle-aged white women I know have discovered a gluten allergy.
I like the whole wheat pastas. I add garlic to the cooking water and after draining pour extra virgin olive oil (sometimes other flavor oils) on it. They seem to hold those flavors better than the bleached pasta.
Last week, actually. I’m still working my way through some whole wheat pasta that I bought on sale last year. It’s Ronzoni Healthy Harvest brand. I can’t figure out a good way to use it. I like brown rice and pairing it with rich, earthy things, much like I would, say, something like barley or buckwheat, but whole wheat pasta doesn’t work well for me with my standard pasta dishes, so I’ll just keep going with white pasta. I only eat pasta once every two weeks or so, so it’s not like the extra gram of fiber I’m getting from whole wheat is going to make any health difference whatsoever.
It’s the ailment-du-jour, much like adult ADHD was for a while there, and self-diagnosed Aspergers/Autism.
While there are people with real gluten issues, they’re fewer and farther between than all the crap in the stores would suggest. I think it’s a combination of attention-whoring and placebo effect myself. (IANA doctor, so take my opinion with a grain of salt)
I could tolerate eating it. I didn’t love it, but I could tolerate it as a healthier substitute. Once I found out it wasn’t much different (nutritionally) than the good kind, I quit buying it.
Cilantro was around long before it cornered the herb market, and sourdough was around long before it became the artisanal “must” for every “real” baker. Now I can barely find fresh-baked bread without it. There WAS a time when sourdough was a specialty product for San Francisco ex-pats.
My friends can’t taste it. To me, it tastes like you’ve washed your face in Irish Spring, and the soap accidentally gets into your mouth. Its awful, and it permeates every corner of the dish.
Like that horrid concoction, Feta Cheese, and its bastard brother, Blue Cheese. Here, suck on a lump of mold I just pulled out of my dishwasher - it’ll taste the same.
I can’t imagine trying to eat the stuff plain, but properly prepared tofu is a wonderful little flavor sponge. The texture isn’t bad either, as long as it’s not overcooked.
Very interesting! While I’m not a fan of hot foods at all, I do enjoy items where the flavor of the pepper is enjoyable. So many people seem to think that the point of a hot pepper is the searing heat…I’m not really sure that I understand that. (Strangely enough, jalapeno pepper Jelly Bellies have a nice flavor. The chili mango ones are tasty too…I’m not sure if they’re still being made though.)
