Fladabosco's Profile
2 Weeks in Vienna (Wien)
We are experienced foodies (when I was young I cooked in the most expensive French restaurant in Silicon Valley) and know well made food when we eat it. We only ate there once but the food was fabulous. Maybe the cooks had a good day but there's no denying it was great food. Simple food, yes, but really well done.
Best chef's tasting menu in SF?
Just to post my experience at Manresa. 4 tasting dinners, one wine pairing and one premium wine pairing, 2 diners who drank soda. Over a thousand dollars! Not even close to being worth it. While there were some fine wines the pairings themselves were uninspired. Two or three items on the tasting menu were good, but nothing was spectacular. If you stick to their signature dishes you'll have a better meal for much less money. But even those weren't that interesting. Admittedly I only ate there once but I have heard the same things from other foodies who have eaten the tasting menu there.
Suggestions for nice dinner in Big Sur/Carmel?
Nepenthe in Big Sur has very good food and the location is spectacular. Had a nice traditional French meal at Anton and Michel. Very romantic and beautiful dining room. I also like Graising's. I have had good meals at Tutto Mondo.
Need help !!!!!
We went to NY last year and had great food at Mario Batali's pizza place,
We ordered lots of food intending to take some back to the hotel but we ate it all. No joke, make sure you try the olive oil gelato. Incredible!
What food related products would you (or do you) buy on-line?
I have had great success buying things like dried mushroom and jarred truffles. I hate to give up a source but I found great prices and good products at PistolRivermushrooms.com.
Best hot sauces?
I love Cholula brand hot sauce. It has a wooden top. They make a garlic variety which I don't like as much.
need quick high protein lunch ideas please
Quick, high in protein and tasty: Sprinkle a pork chop with salt, pepper garlic powder, paprika and cumin. While it is cooking drain a can of chickpeas and dress it with a little sliced of minced onion, cumin, salt, pepper and lemon juice and if you want a bit of plain yogurt or sour cream. A piece of fruit, sliced cucumbers, radishes, etc. and a piece of bread makes this a meal.
Seafood cooks quickly, so a fillet of sole or slice of salmon takes almost no time.
I frequently have left over brown rice and like to fry it with onions, celery and leftover meat. Takes 5 minutes.
Refreezing defrosted seafood?
The problem with refreezing is not a health issue, if you wee careful with the material when you defrosted it the first time.
The problem is with flavor and texture. If you think of the cells as being like little plastic bags filled with fluids you could imagine how freezing it and defrosting it expands and contracts the bags. When you buy frozen seafood it is usually frozen so fast that the cells don't break, but when you put it in a home freezer this is bound to happen. That is why home frozen seafood tends to have a flat, mushy flavor.
Freezing the seafood in a sauce helps to mask these problems but it will never have any fresh flavor and the texture wont be great. It also helps to freeze it quickly.
For example if you make some fried scallops and want to freeze them, refrigerate them first until they are cold all the way through. Then place them on a cold cookie sheet a least an inch apart from each other and freeze. In a couple of hours when they are frozen put them in a plastic bag and squeeze as much air out as possible. Wrap in foil, write the contents and date on the foil and place in the freezer. In the food business this is known as IQF, or individually quick frozen and is done at temperatures below zero F, with fans and other techniques to speed the process.
Food myths--or are they?
It depends on how you use parsely,and the type and quality. Curly parsley is pretty tasteless and is used to make food look good. I like to use celery leaves when I cook but sometimes the flavor is too strong. Mixing them with flat leaf (Italian) parsely evens it out. Parsely is also really good for you.
If you get good fresh Italian parsely, make some pasta and dress it with a little good olive oil, a dash of pepper and salt and a good bit of freshly chopped parsely and you have a great side dish.
Chopping some greens with fresh garlic does tone down the garlic. It's a classic French technique.
Tea should be done to your taste. Since there are thousands of varieties and many steeping techniques you have to develop your own method.
You can alter the strength of garlic by chopping it different ways. Paradoxically the smaller you chop it the stronger it tastes. As you break or smash the cell walls you mix more of the chemicals that react and create new compounds that have the classic garlic flavor. If you want a mild garlic flavor leave the pieces large and cook them slowly. If you want that 'I don't care if you ever kiss me again' flavor use a garlic press and keep it raw.
By the way you can grow your own garlic easily and cheaply. I use a plastic bucket filled a rich planting mix. I take a head of garlic (it can't have been irradiated), separate the cloves and plant them pointy side up about an inch deep. After a couple of months you get something that looks like a scallion with a bulbous head. If you pick it early enough it will not have the papery cover and it will be undivided, almost the texture of a radish and it will have a mild garlicky flavor (yes, I live in garlic country south of San Francisco,)
Plastic cutting boards usually have an uneven surface. If you have excellent knives and know how to sharpen them you know that you are trying to create a very narrow ridgeline along the edge. If the metal is at all soft (like a good high carbon knife) then the uneven surface will dull your knife. And if you use the edge to scrape things off the board (heaven forbid) you will dull the knife quickly. If you have stainless knives with a hard edge it's not going to be an issue.
2 Weeks in Vienna (Wien)
HI,
Just spent a couple of days in Vienna and have one fantastic recommendation. Zattl, near Beethoven't Molker Bastei apartment, not far from the Spanish Riding School and Stephansdom in the old quarter.
It's a beer hall. The new owners have only had it a few weeks and the food is enthusiastic and high quality, especially for the price. We had a fantastic mushroom soup, a really great plate of smoked salmon with the best sauce for it I've had, and prooerly done weinerschnitel. My wife and daughter had goulash, which I have always avoided in restaurants, but it was delicious. They serve unpastuerized Pilsner Urquell and there are even two tables with taps right at the table.
I know that recommending a beer hall is unfoodielike, but trust me the food here is fabulous. We have spent almost 3 weeks in Europe: Paris, Vienna, Graz, Venice and Florence and this was hands down the best meal. And compared to what we have spent everywhere else it's a bargain.
Scott
PS: On a busy touristy day we went to Beethoven's apartment where he wrote the 4th, 5th and 7th symphonies, Fidelio, etc and we were the only people there. My lord, to stand in the room where the 5th symphony was written...
cherries, what to do?
HI Karen,
Wash them well, invite a couple of friends over and serve them with an assortment of hard cheeses, some cookies and a glass of Vin Santo or late harvest reisling and some coffee.
Or try this: wash and pit them (use a small knife and cut al the way around following the crease). Sautee a chicken, or some pork chops and while they are resting on a plate in a warm place sautee the cherries for just a moment with some black pepper, a pinch of thyjme if you like, some big red wine or marsala, and a dash of butter. Pour over the meat and pig out.
Salt in Restaurant Food
Saltiness is a learned taste. I cooked in restaurants of varying quality when i was younger, then when I got married and bought a house we had no salt in it for 2 years. Trust me, we ate well. Now, years later and in better financial shape we eat out more and use a moderate amount of salt at home. Resto meals almost always taste salty to me.
You can't eat the garbage at chain restaurants in America and assume they regard your health as anything but disposable. Salt is used as a preservative, a way to get people to order more drinks (high profit margins) and to mask the inferior quality of the ingredients and lack of skill in the kitchen.
Sorry to sound harsh but to me there is no better food than a pepper of cucumber pulled from my garden, an apricot plucked from my tree or a fish pulled from the water. Processed, frozen and quick fried by a minimum wage cook is hardly something I want to put in my body.
