Reminds me of a story I heard on NPR several years ago about a couple American expatriates in Hong Kong, who decided to open an American-style Chinese restaurant there, since there were a lot of other American expats there who were nostalgic for American-style Chinese food, which as you point out is nothing like real Chinese cuisine. They were having a difficult time sourcing ingredients, since a lot of American-style Chinese food uses stuff that you can’t even find in China, like applesauce for the eggroll duck sauce.
Ugh, I hope you guys waited to carve your Halloween pumpkins until the last minute, because in my house we carved the pumpkin, and it sat around, starting days before Halloween. Our pumpkins would not have been food-safe at all.
Yeah, as I recall we usually carved our jack-o-lanterns on the day of Halloween. I’m not sure how far in advance we actually bought the pumpkin, though, now that you mention it. But maybe they’re safer to leave sitting around before they’ve been carved.
Yes, I believe that before they’re cut into, if they are stored in a cool, dry place, they’ll stay fine indefinitely, maybe months. That’s what root cellars were for in the olden days.
My dad used to make the worst baked mac and cheese because they didn’t cook it all the way through. The noodles were so hard you could chop your teeth on them.
This was the same situation for my wife. She thought pork chops were nasty little hockey pucks of meat until I grilled her up a few. They weren’t even nice, thick chops. They were just the thin ones you got in a family pack. The difference was that I seasoned them nicely and grilled them only until they were done. These days, I think she actually prefers pork chops to steak.
Lots of escargot talk in here and I assume I mentioned it in the linked thread, but I always saw escargot as a rubbery device to get butter sauce into your mouth. I didn’t hate it (I’ll also eat other molluscs) but it was more novelty than delicacy. Then, last year, I saw some on a menu and ordered it on a lark since it had been years since I last had it. What came out was delicious in its own right; earthy, soft, sort of a mushroom-like flavor and could have probably been enjoyed without the sauce (though that was good as well). It was like “Oh, shit, THIS is what the fancy people are talking about when they order escargot!” Now I’m torn between wanting more of it and knowing that 95% of places are probably going to serve me the buttered-rubber stuff I was used to.
I worked in food service in high school. Big casino and lots of kitchen overlap. I was in a prep area and one wise-ass was making escargot. You’d drop the little buggers into the fancy dishes, then smear the garlic butter over the top. When an order would come in, you toss the dish in the broiler.
Now, I love escargot, and also know that straight out of the can, they are “cooked” even if cold. The guy took the ugliest snail-looking one out and bet me $5 I wouldn’t eat it “raw”. I pretended to be grossed out, but made him show me the money. Bill on the counter, I grabbed that sucker and mowed it down, snatched the fiver and said, “Thanks, Dude!”
I have had escargot once, a while ago now, and I seem to remember it was okay, but not great, rubbery and chewy like clams, with the butter and garlic doing a lot of the heavy lifting. But yes, a lot of what makes a food transcendent is the preparation and execution.
Going back to vegetables, I long ago got over my childhood hate of brussels sprouts and came to love them, but a few years ago I went to a middling ‘tavern food’ style chain restaurant with my sisters called the Rusty Bucket. Decent food, for what it was, but we ordered a side of the brussels sprouts and they were amazing. Cut in half, browned and crusted with parmesan on the flat side. I’d like to reproduce it at home, but I don’t know how I’d carefully brown the sprouts on one side in a pan like that, while paying attention to the entree and other sides. Let alone how a restaurant does it on a large scale.
It’s not hard. Put them on a baking sheet, spray them with cooking spray, add parmesan if you want, and put it under the broiler. I don’t know the exact time, but it doesn’t need to be all that precise.
In general, good vegetables aren’t hard. There’s one bad way to cook them, and a lot of good ways. Just don’t boil them (unless you’re making soup or something), and you’re most of the way there.
Yeah, I had the sense that the perfectly browned flat side crusted with Parmesan had been pan-fried to get it so perfectly browned, but that can’t have been the way it was done, especially in the assembly-line way food needs to be prepared in a restaurant. They must be partially pre-cooked, then turned flat-side up on a baking sheet, sprinkled with Parm, then blasted briefly on broiler setting.
I actually have brussels sprouts in the fridge. Will have to try it.
I blast mine over medium-high heat on a frying pan to brown, cut-side-down, then splash some water in it and cover to finish cooking the rest. I wonder if you can do the same thing in reverse, with parcooking them in the microwave for like 3 minutes and then finishing under the broiler or on a grill. One of the things a microwave is great at is parcooking or steaming vegetables.
Love boiled and mashed rutabaga-- what my Scottish Grandma called ‘Swedes’. Which is odd, since most Scots call rutabaga ‘neeps’ as in ‘neeps and tatties’. But to my Grandma, they were always ‘Swedes’.
Correct! I moved to Manhattan Ks. in 1975. The 4 -plex we lived in had a small garden with 4 tomato plants that had been started by the previous resident. My wife was baking our own bread in those days. For lunch I had sandwiches made with our garden tomatoes on her white bread with a slice of american cheese. Every single year since then I have tried to recreate that food by growing my oiwn tomatoes, Amazing flavors in vine- ripened fruit!
is less so. To each their own.