The other day I was making chili. I was out of ground cumin but I had some cumin seeds so I toasted them and then ground them up using my mortar and pestle. The flavor was so remarkably different (and better) than the ground cumin in the jar that I was amazed. I was also very pleased with the discovery. I will (probably) never use ground cumin from the jar again.
Over the years I’ve had quite a few of these little discoveries and I imagine others have as well so I thought to open a thread and see if maybe we can’t enlighten one another. Here’s another:
Garlic tastes different depending on how you prepare it. Pressing it with a garlic press tastes different than chopping it with a knife which tastes different than grating it with a microplane grater and roasted garlic is a completely different animal.
Roasting vegetables is easier, faster, and tastier than almost any other method of cooking said vegatable. Maybe I am just going through a phase right now, but all my vegitable dishes get roasted either on the stovetop or under the broiler these days.
Also, plum tomatoes are fantastic in a salad. Way better than your regular round tomato.
Today I was making New England clam chowdah and for the first time I tried making it was salt pork. I always thought it would just be like using bacon. Oh my, it is totally different. It had a beautiful aroma and the chowdah has more depth then when I just use butter.
After watching an episode of “Good Eats” I realized I can grind my own meat using my food processor. I like the idea that I’ll know exactly what parts go into it.
I’m totally with you all on the roasted vegetables, And the salt pork and the plum tomatoes.
My grocery store has pork jowl bacon which is a very tasty ingredient indeed.
Oh and Irish butter, just amazing…those Irish cows must be really happy.
I’m with you on the cumin. The smell of freshly crushed toasted cumin seed is one of my favorite things.
Others:
The first time I cooked a steak correctly, warm and pink and rare through, properly seared on the outside. (Then I put bleu cheese on it. Drool.)
Eating salmon raw, five minutes dead, out of an Alaskan river.
The first home-cooked meal I had when I visited Tuscany a year and a half ago. A very small number of extremely high-quality ingredients, arranged in precisely the correct proportions, and cooked perfectly. It sounds obvious in retrospect, but it really does matter that these people have been polishing their cuisine for two thousand years, and know exactly what they’re doing with every single ingredient. Completely changed the way I think about food.
Homemade pasta requires a bit of patience, but omigod is it ever worth it. If it wasn’t for the fact that it takes around an hour from start to finish (including time for the dough to rest after kneading) and that it’s much easier with a second set of hands to help out, I’d probably never buy storebought again. I can’t believe I didn’t buy a pasta maker sooner.
Homemade ice creams and sorbets are easier to scoop and have a nicer texture if you add 2-4 tbsp of booze prior to freezing. The easiest option is neutral flavours like vodka and gin, but it’s fun to play with flavoured liqueurs to see what interesting combos you can come up with.
Celery root is one of the awesomest vegetables known to man, once you get past its intimidating gnarly appearance.
Well I have a gas range so with something like a bell pepper that has a thick skin
Turn on fire
place pepper in fire
rotate as necessary with tongs
I am told* that you can do similar things with a dry cast iron pan (sometimes coated with a bit of aluminum foil) for less thick skinned items. But I haven’t tried it.
*Told by this man’s cookbook, which is what got me into roasting in the first place.
I may be completely wrong, but slower for longer allows the heat to distribute more evenly through the food. I’ve encountered plenty of food that, cooked at the recommended length at 100%, end up only partly heated. Slower for longer probably gets around that.
It’s also something I’ve never even thought to try with the microwave. :smack:
Yes, freshly grated nutmeg is totally different from the stuff in the jar…especially on eggnog. BTW homemade eggnog has absolutely no resemblance to the stuff sold in the supermarkets
I make my own homemade ice cream, and it’s true that alcohol makes it much better. I like to add a shot and a half of Godiva chocolate liqueur to my vanilla ice cream. No one can ever put their finger on why it’s so delicious. Infused vodkas are also a good addition to most ice creams, especially vanilla or lemon.
My revelations:
If you’re going to eat out, spend five dollars or fifty, never in between. Every meal more expensive than five dollars but cheaper than fifty, you can make yourself and at much higher quality.
During Hurricane Charley when my home was without power for several days and we generously had those days off work to sit and mope about it I came to a dual epiphany:
– You can make a decent-tasting oil dip for bread by just taking olive oil and throwing some italian spices into it and let it sit for a couple minutes.
– Since bread was the only calories I had in my house at the time and everywhere else was also closed, I NEVER want to have bread and oil-spice dip again in my life!