I have never had a duck egg. I’ve daydreamed about eating one, though.
I might be too intimidated to try a duck egg in a fancier dish with more exotic ingredients. But a duck egg on a BLT? Sure, why not? I get two positive experiences. I get a sandwich that I’m bound to enjoy. And I get to try a new food. Maybe a duck egg doesn’t taste any different from a chicken egg, but at least I’ll get to say so with some authority.
If it’s just a gimmick, it won’t take long for it to disappear from the menu.
To me, it’s the same old “every ingredient has to be something different/obscure/unusual” bit that makes me roll my eyes. That’s essentially what I got from the OP too.
Had some friends like that back in the day. Everything had to be ‘special’. Had dinner with them and they just went on and on about the ingredients and where they were from. Not just sea salt, but kosher sea salt from one particular place. Only bread from the french bakery. Some unusual kind of lettuce I can’t think of. Some obscure brand of salad dressing. And on and on.
All washed down with box wine. :smack:
Honestly, I could not have cared less where the ingredients came from or how ‘special’ they were. Was it a good meal? It was reasonable. Basically just steak, salad, bread and wine. How it needed to be such a food snob thing was a complete mystery to me.
I’m nearing the end of Volume 4, and haven’t reached that part yet. It was something every reviewer mentioned. But based on everything else I’ve read, it obviously includes grinding your own hamburger, etc. They are very fond of infusing flavors via vacuum sealing, and I believe I noticed in the New York Times review that the lettuce had liquid smoke vacuum infused into it.
Ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.
One of the best things about the book are the sidebars. They explain about processed cheese food. It’s just a blend of two cheeses with an emulsifying salt. The “processed cheese food” nonsense was the result of traditional cheese makers bribing their Congresscritters to deal with a threat. It’s better than the name they wanted - “embalmed cheese”.
Exactly. Even if I would never use a technique or make a particular recipe, it is fascinating. They went through the trouble of actually testing things that “everyone knows” and demolishing a lot of food myths.
There is a wonderful sidebar on page 335 of Volume 4 about blind taste tests. A study by the American Association of Wine Economists had duck liver pate, pork liver pate, liverwurst, Spam and Newman’s Own dog food. The study participants knew they would be eating dog food, but they had no idea which was which. So while the dog food got the lowest average ranking, they did no better than random chance trying to identify which one was the dog food. The sidebar also mentions the possibility that “those folks at Newman’s make damn good dog food.”
That’s what brought me to my original post. Modernist cuisine hates corks. A screw top is a far better tool for sealing a bottle of wine, and aseptic packaging that lets in little air is even better.
One of the sidebars in the wine section is about hyperdecanting wine - putting it in a blender on high for 30 seconds.
I’ve done parts of it, but never the whole thing. The smoked lettuce and compressed tomato were not particularly exciting, though that might be because I only have a low-end chamber vacuum sealer and not the $3K+ ones that they use. Maybe they infuse better, or maybe it’s just that those two things are subtle.
The cheese is something I do quite a bit; you can easily get the flavor of real cheese and the texture of velveeta with a little bit of work. I like it for burgers, grilled cheese, etc.
Did not do the burger, as I don’t have a fookin’ liquid nitrogen bath at my disposal.
Mushroom ketchup. I have some of this in my freezer still. It’s pretty good, but once again, not over-the-top OMG delicious. And a pain to make, if you do it the way Myhrvold wants you to. It’s one of those recipes with little bits of about 2 dozen different things - soy sauce, malt syrup, etc etc. - and even though I keep a pretty good pantry, I had to order some stuff off the Internet. Was it good? Yeah. Was it worth the time/money/hassle? Well, I haven’t made it since, and there’s still a container in my freezer, so no.
Is there ever a good time for duck eggs? Or are they just so auto-pretentious that they should never be used? Because duck eggs do in fact exist, and I don’t see why they should require some complex justification before being used.
Maybe the chef had always wanted to try cooking with them. Maybe the a bigger egg is the right size for the bread they are using. Maybe that little extra richness does add something. Maybe the food supplier was having a special on them.
And maybe the chef just thought its be kind of neat. Is that really so bad? It’s just food, why not have some fun with it?
Or maybe the chef is a douche who caters to douches. Maybe the owner thinks he can charge $27 for BLTs if he puts duck eggs on 'em, cackling all the way to the bank. Maybe a duck killed the busboy’s father and he’s getting his revenge by slipping duck eggs into the fridge.
This is standard pissant griping, we’re not making a federal case against anyone. Unless you’re saying that you’ve never eaten anything that was a cobbled-together mess of “exotic” ingredients that didn’t really taste that great and didn’t justify the cost or the hype, in which case I would guess that you never made it down to Ray’s Hell Burger when they were open.
… but… but… it’s cooked with truffle oil! For only $10 more!
Seriously though, I didn’t mean to “hate” on anyone or “bag” on anyone. I was just trying to comment on a trend - not dealing in absolutes. Nobody cares to defend the sushiburger I also posted?
I didn’t expect such vitriolic backlash and assumptions of my personality from posting this. Maybe if I had couched this as a question rather than a statement people would have softened? Probably not.
The point isn’t about the duck egg. The point is that the duck egg is paired with wasabi mayo on top of a classic BLT seems excessive. I’ll fully admit I didn’t know that “wheatberry” just meant whole-kernel grain mixed into the bread.
That said, I’m not a timid eater. I enjoy many different cuisines. However, when I eat at fusion restaurants it seems that the food I eat often isn’t better. In fact, it often results in some rather odd and unpleasant tastes. The only reason I can think that these foods are on the menu is simply for the sake of being new, different, edgy, and gimmicky. Things like taro fries instead of french fries.
It’d be nice if fusion foods came with explanations of what the chef was thinking. For instance, avocado was put into a sushi roll because the rich creamy taste of the avocado was a cheap, but serviceable alternative to fatty tuna. The same goes for cream cheese. That I can live with. However, turning the sushi roll into a burger or a pizza? I don’t think I like that.
This right here and why people wish we place foodies in one building and burn it down. “Oh, you’re not impressed by my random assembling of ingredients? You must eat at McDonald’s everyday!” Uh, no, I don’t. I like real food, I like good food, and I’ve honestly never even once purchased Wonder Bread or bologna.
But there is this obnoxious trend of smashing it-foods together and declaring it haute cuisine that irritating wannabe foodies seem to be all over. Also, whenever someone doesn’t like your stupid foodie item, it doesn’t mean they’d prefer to eat a plain cup of white rice. Which, btw, there’s nothing wrong with.
Dude, I got your point the moment I read your OP. I think for some people, it was just an excuse to pull their “foodie” bullshit again.
That’s not really a gimmick. We have (or had, until a divorce) a Filipina relative who made us all sorts of taro dishes, including taro fries and taro chips…it’s part of a real cuisine, and does taste different. Still, I do get your OP, it’s just that I imagine if I had spent my life cooking, I’d have become interested in trying out new things, particularly if I found an audience that was willing to taste and appreciate them. Here’s an example of an elaborate combo that works for me:
And just to complicate things, what she doesn’t mention is that little container of ketchup is actually spicy ketchup. Mmm.
I really like your idea about dishes coming with explanations, though. That might eliminate the appearance of snobbery, unless of course it was written in more snobby language.
I’m not a fucking foodie. But I like good food, and I like to try new things. If he’d eaten this sandwich and said it was bad- fine. But to bag on someone’s fucking facebook feed because they’re a more adventurous eater than you? Whatever. Enjoy being boring.
I eat what I like, goddamit. And I’m not going to apologize for liking good food. I got shit from someone the other night for making a wheat pasta with white beans and kale. OMG fucking kale, the world is coming to an end! Why can’t we just eat jarred spaghetti every night like normal people.
Well, I fucking like kale. And I bet duck eggs are pretty damn good too.
That’s kind of the point though, right? Often fusions taste great because the ingredients complement each other well, and other times it seems like someone drew trendy food items from a hat and cobbled them together. There are so many times when I’m eating something and thinking “This combination of flavors is a heavenly synergy in my mouth” and similarly so many times when I think “Sigh. You know, just putting a bunch of shit together doesn’t make it work.” I do get annoyed by forcefully cute restaurants whose entire menu consist of fusion items imbued with buzz words, with inflated prices and mediocre food. Annoying. Stop trying to be creative and start trying to be good. If you can do both, then great, if not, always choose good over creative. When you choose creative over good, it smacks of pretense and is irritating.
That does sound like a fun menu idea. When I open up my restaurant (which will be never), I’ll do this.
When you tell people their hobbies are inherently dumb and pretentious, some people don’t take it well.
Nobody likes a food snob, but nobody likes a reverse food snob either. The legions brunching on quail egg omelets with locally sourced brocollini and imported pancetta are not better than you, but the guy chowing down a Grand Slam at Denny is also not better than they are. I see a lot of people in this thread wanting a pat of the back for being too smart and down to earth or whatever to be taken in by the great duck-egg conspiracy, to the point where it looks like they overcompensating.
Some fusion food is poorly executed by ham-handed chefs looking to tart up their menu with unusual flavors rather than actually skillfully planned dishes. If you want to criticize those guys, go ahead. But some fusions dishes are really pretty damn good. My favorite restaurant in DC is a Latin-Asian tapas place that is absolutely objectively divine.
But a lot of times, “ridiculous” fusion dishes are just a result of playful experimentation, and not even really meant to be passed off as the absolute last word in good food. I’ve thrown together some pretty wacky sounding stuff out of leftovers from previous meals and random stuff in the fridge. I may have some pomegranate seeds from last night’s dessert, a bit of smoked salmon from lunch, and some fennel that I picked up at the farmer’s market because it’s cheap. If I’m bored on a Sunday afternoon, I might throw that into a salad just to see what it tastes like, and if it tastes good I might take a picture and post it on Facebook. Does that make me a pretentious twit taken in by clever marketing? Probably not. It probably just means I like to experiment when I cook.
Chefs do the same thing on a larger scale. What would a cheeseburger taste like if it was sushi? Is there any way to make that work? I don’t know, let’s try it and see what happens! Ewww, it’s gross, so let’s try something different and see if we can make it good. Hey, this is actually kind of neat, want to try it?
OP: I’m pretty irritated by this trend of BS “fusion” items, piecing together random shit, as if that somehow automatically makes it good, and then smugging at everyone about it.
Response: Well I’m soooorrrry that I’m not happy with bologna sandwiches.
Yeah, because that was the OP’s point, to never try new things and that he’s annoyed by people with adventurous palettes.
Anyway, just for the record, I don’t think the sandwich in the OP’s example was particularly bullshitty, but I know exactly what trend he’s talking about and am annoyed by it too. And no, this doesn’t mean I eat bologna sandwiches. Also, I probably would have been annoyed by the FB post described in the OP too, but that’s mainly because I don’t care at all about what you ate today. I eat food too. Everyday! And often it is very, very fucking good. I also brush my teeth everyday. I don’t wanna hear about your food unless it’s some kick ass shit. And no, BLTs do not count as kick ass even if it has wasabi mayo on it. It’s a fucking bacon sandwich. Get over yourself. But enough of this tangent for now.
Do you justify every food choice like this? Sometimes you want Swiss cheese with your roast beef and sometimes you want cheddar. Why do duck eggs require such elaborate justification?
The whole point of bison burgers is that it’s leaner than beef and probably bison meat is more likely to be produced organically than beef is. I don’t know anyone who is trying to pretend that it’s something it isn’t. Bison meat isn’t as tasty as beef, but sometimes you make choices for other reasons.
I think you can still get Hellburgers at Ray’s to the Third. I thought the ingredients were fine. I just thought the burgers were too large—there was just too much hamburger in the hamburger and it didn’t cook evenly and threw off the balance.
Taro fries are just food. They’re common food in some places but they’re uncommon here. Food preferences change. But how are they going to change until someone is willing to offer and someone is willing to try something new? Everything you have ever eaten was “new, different, edgy, and gimmicky” at some point. And then people learned to like them.
It is if you top it with artisanal bacon, organic California avocados, heirloom tomatoes, red onions, organic heirloom greens, house-made aioli, and serve it in a freshly baked-on-premisis brioche.
The friend quoted by pancakes3 in the OP isn’t automatically a snob. The OP’s friend said “hey I had this it was new and neat and awesome.” A snob would bloviate about how that concoction is the only “true” or “proper” BLT. as much as I hate the term, a “foodie” can be content with anything from low-brow fast food to something they spent half a day preparing from ingredients they grew/raised themselves. Snobs will spend more time going on about how awesome they are because they hate things and how much better they are than people who don’t hate the same things. It’s this last group of people who make me fully support MeanOldLady’s desire to cram them all into a building and set it alight.
it’s like beer. I get to a minor level of irritation at beer snobs who just have to let you know how much they hate anything mass market. Meanwhile, at the same time I have a six of Labatt’s in the fridge, I also have a couple of cases of IPA which I brewed myself. A snob wouldn’t even want to open the Labatt’s to dump it on the ground, and would loudly tell you so over and over.
(as a somewhat-related tangent, the saddest photo I saw on another forum was a picture of a table of four people at a Japanese restaurant. All four people at this table were sitting there with their fucking DSLRs pointed at the dishes they had just been served. [Will Smith]That’s like… damn.[/Will Smith])
There are approximately ten million restaurants in this town where I can get good food. I can get good wood fired pizza. I can get good Sichuan Chinese. I can good high-end French. I can get good steaks. I can good BBQ. Good food is not in short supply. The world is lousy with good food.
So what’s wrong with the occasional restaurant that focuses on creativity? It’s twice as hard to make something that is creative AND perfect, and with any experimentation there are bound to be hits and misses. But sometimes going to a wacky little pretentious fusion place can be fun, if not just to critique what they came up with and come away with some new ideas of my own about what does and doesn’t work. It’s like watching pretentious art films. Sometimes it’s good, often it’s bad, but you usually walk away having learned something about the medium.
Now if my friends only wanted to go to these places, and consistently raved about half-assed fusion food that honestly isn’t very good simply because it’s trendy, I might be annoyed with my friends for having such bad taste. But I can’t really blame the owner for selling what people are buying.
