beethoven's Profile
What exactly are collard greens and how do I cook them?
So, do you just use the vinegar/juice? or spoon out the whole peppers and eat them, or what?
(ignorant Northerner here...)
What Food Trend are You So Sick Of?
Describing anything with the phrase "xxxx of xxx-y xxx-ness."
Bowl of chocolatey goodness, plate of porky deliciousness....pfeh.
Bring me my spear of ow-y sharpness...
High quality ramen - is there such thing?
I don't mean the restaurant kind, I mean the cheap bricks in the plastic pouches.
I tend to buy things on impulse in ethnic markets with labels I can't read at all, and over the years I've gotten some pretty good ramen but I have no idea what the brand was or what the flavors were (shrimp? Something seafoody, in any case)
Asian chowhounds, are there any good ones out there? Care to describe the label or what to look for? Any particular country put out better stuff?
If you could wear your food as perfume...
Heck, I did this when I was a kid - snuck the almond extract out of the cupboard and dabbed it on my wrists. Drove my mother nuts.
I miss my mom's______dish!
Sand tarts.
Very very flat, thin, round sugar cookies, tops shiny with egg wash, a single black walnut in the middle.
You have to make them ahead and let them cure out on the screen porch for a couple weeks so they get the right amount of bendy in the middle.
Mine still aren't like my grandmother's. I think I have the wrong kind of screens on my porch.
Food and Drink Choices Inspired by Fictional Characters
Warm hard-boiled-egg sandwiches, on toast, lots of mayo/blackpepper.
Thank you Sue Grafton/Kinsey Milhone.
(the most comforting food in the world)
Apricot kernels -- what to do with them
I bet baklava would be an interesting experiment.
Best Sandwich in the World
Grilled aged cheddar on good sourdough/french.
Peel it apart and insert bread-and-butter pickles.
ISO Lovage
Plant some in a spare corner and you will never run out -- and once in a while it'll bolt a flower stalk seven feet high like gimlis', plus it'll be a haven for swallowtail caterpillars. In the meantime, just use celery leaves and noone will know...
What is scrapple?
Nobody mentioned the buckwheat version, which is pretty much the same bluish-grey colour of the faces of dead martyrs in medieval paintings, and tastes even better than the cornmeal-only version.
The trick to getting a nice crust is to fry it on one side in a cast iron pan until it's almost brown enough, and then turn the heat DOWN. The slices will release from the pan after a few minutes and all the fond will stay together w/ the slice, not stuck to the pan. Flip it over and turn the heat back up. It's similar in its crunchy outside/tender inside contrast to fried polenta or a good croquette.
My braised/pot roasted beef/pork roasts always come out dry, hard
Go on ebay, search under Descoware/Dru Holland/Copco and get yourself a vintage dutch oven for about 1/10th the price of new LeC -- but watch the shipping charges, those suckers are heavy! Get someone who will ship it low and slow ...
Which foundational cookbook would you give a beginning 23 YO cook?
"The original Moosewood recipes are loaded with saturated fats, sodium, and calories."
Yup :)
ISO Salsa Lizano, fresh epazote, plantains...
Anyone know where to find them in the greater Boston area?
I'm a recent transplant and have pretty quickly found Russo's, the Mt Auburn Armenian nexus, any number of Asian/Indian markets, and a few Italian groceries.
Where do I look for Mexican/Central/So. American food supplies?
I've got friends in the DR community up in Lawrence, but I'm looking for closer-to-home.
-- not afraid of "bad" parts of town, They're usually not. --
Your mom's weird cooking ... and other stories? (recipes encouraged)
I've been eating the same sandwich for years, but with the pickles as bread-and-butter slices, not relish. It's basically a "ploughmans lunch" stacked up instead of on a plate.
Mmm...that classic combination of salt/fat and crisp/sweet... and it's just not quite right unless you let it sit in a lunchbox for three hours.
Which foundational cookbook would you give a beginning 23 YO cook?
I'm surprised that no one has yet mentioned the Moosewood cookbook (and the accompanying Broccoli Forest).
Folks under forty won't get it, but there was a time when arugula and tahini were foreign words (my mother thought arugula was a tropical island). I suspect we over-forties might think of Moosewood as a relic of our hippie pasts, but there are many good recipes in there that were once novelties and are now standards.
The quirky illustrations and indeterminate amounts ( a "glob" or a "splat" or "pile") can be very comforting for folks who find the wordier tomes intimidating.
Some cookbooks are laid out like an encyclopedia (little teeny letters) some like a busy webpage (sidebars! headers!).
Moosewood doesn't feel like a textbook -- there's one recipe on a page and lots of white space. For anyone with reading issues or even just newbie fear, it can be a welcome respite from information overload.
Three VERY different eaters just did Coppa (yum!), Istanbu'lu's next, then what?
I'm the adventurous foodie, my husband is the meat guy, my stepson is the sweet, hesitant-but-curious 17 year old vegetarian.
We have a newish tradition of going out for a good meal for birthdays/milestone events - restaurants are good politically neutral territory, neither mom, dad or stepmom's house.
I kept a close eye on board discussions of ethnic/excellent/veggie friendly/meat oriented places in the Boston area, and headed to Coppa last week as a result. Score! Everybody happy!
(thanks, hounds!)
Istanbu'lu sounds like the place to try next, as does Toro. Anybody else in a similar situation have favorite spots you want to share? Doesn't have to be uber fancy/pricy, just good.
Extra points if it's on the quiet side; it's hard to work on your family dynamics in the midst of the loud/hip crowd.
PS the kid's a vegetarian, but not savvy enough to ask if the arancini risotto was cooked in chicken broth... and we don't always tell him. (bad parents, I know)
Weekday breakfast Waltham, Belmont, Lexington area?
I've had good luck so far at Uncommon Grounds, if you're willing to cross the border into Watertown -- and then you can do your lunch/dinner shopping at Sevan/Arax/Massis.
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Uncommon Grounds
575 Mount Auburn St, Watertown, MA 02472
Searching for secret dip recipe...
About sixteen years ago I used to go to a monthly potluck before a contra dance (google it) in very rural New Hampshire.
A big bunch of us bleeding-heart-liberal-Birkenstock-wearing-starving-artisan-neo-hippies would gather around and just inhale the dip that one guy (we'll call him Dan) would always bring. It was warm and orange and spicy and just fabulous, and he would NEVER tell us what was in it. We loved it.
A little later I got to know Dan (ahem) rather well, and during a somewhat...personal...moment I decided to take advantage and asked him what was in that dip.
He STILL wouldn't give me the exact recipe, but I DID learn that it involved a double boiler, horseradish, and a great big chunk of (Oh Horrors!) ---- Velveeta.
We dancing hippies woulda DIED if we knew we were eating that icon of all-we-rejected.
I've already searched various threads here and it definitely wasn't the Ro-tel stuff (which also sounds kinda good) Does this ring a bell with anyone? Got a recipe?
Where must I eat (preferably locally produced and/or organic) in southern VT and NH?
Go to Burdick's in Walpole, and try to pick a cool rainy day so you can have the hot (dark!) chocolate.
Authentic ethnic of ANY ethnicity except N.C. , IN N.C.
Hoo boy. My English teacher would not approve of my first post - not clear enough.
OK, I'm looking for authentic ethnic food IN N.C., specifically anywhere between and including Winston-Salem and Charlotte, but not looking for BBQ, liver pudding or any other authentic southern specialty. (altho I DO like such things, a lot.)
Authentic Mexican, Peruvian, Hungarian, Senegalese... but not North Carolinian.
Especially hoping to find places that haven't made their food "safe" for the average American eater - left out the offal, or the fermented fish, or half the spices - or "fused" it with something else just to be trendy.
Help me out, and if you ever come to Vermont I'll make you pancakes w/ maple syrup and fried Lebanon bologna on the side.
AUTHENTIC (fill-in-the-blank) in North Carolina
I love places that are truly authentic -- regular people who cook the regular food they grew up with, without dumbing it down, making it safely "American", or fusing it with something else just to be trendy.
Where can I find food that's just like Grandma made back in the Old Country, any country?
Between Winston-Salem and the Charlotte airport?
Cheap scary dives, takeout trucks and hoity-toity elegance all ok. Thanks!
Multilingual and hungry, in Charlotte for a day, unafraid of bad decor.
Hounds, will you help a northerner out?
We'll be in Charlotte from mid morning till evening so can get in two meals.
Between us we've got good spanish, portuguese, french, a little russian.
We've all eaten great food in scary places all over the world (and scary food in great places). Offal is good, as are whole chicken feet. Spicy is great. We don't mind being the only people in the place who can't read the menus.
What we all like to do is share, swap, and try lots of small things. A top-of-the-line place with a tasting menu would be great, so would a really good ethnic neighborhood place where they wouldn't mind that we were playing musical plates.
We don't really care where the cool people hang out, we just want to eat.
Starting the day with fancy pastries and ending with brain tacos off a truck would be perfect, so would starting off with hash at a truck stop and ending with white-tablecloth.
Extra points for local grown, Central/South American, or North African.
Not afraid of "bad" neighborhoods.
Three adults, two older kids with excellent manners who will eat the same things the grownups do. (We're well-traveled but poor academics, not jetsetters)
Tell us where to go -- and then when you come to Vermont, I'll tell *you* where to find the good stuff!
(PS, I have searched the board, but many listings are about sentimental fixtures or hot trends -- or they're a few years old)
Michigan-Cape Cod- What to eat along the way?
What route are you taking from Ludlow to Hyannis? It'll be easier to help you if we know a little more about what towns you're passing through - and what day of the week. There are good weekend farmers markets on Saturdays in many VT/NH towns (you can get AMAZING pate at the one in Brattleboro)
(and be careful about what day/time you're trying to get onto the Cape!)
Mint, mint, everywhere...
Dry it for tea/bath soak, but more importantly: get it out of the garden now or it really will take over EVERYthing. Get the vertical sprigs and the horizontal runners out now while you still can...
I lost a bet re: CT rivers. Now I have to eat shad roe this Spring. Need advice.
Oh jeez I am so jealous.
Too bad the shad don't come a hundred miles further up the river!
What Food Products Have Changed?
I lived for Ben and Jerry's fabulous raspberry ice cream in 1982 in upstate New York.
It tasted like cream and fruit, because that's what it was made of.
Now it's mostly sugar goo. Greasy kid's stuff, and probably three times as cheap to make.
We (the old farts) vote with our wallets - I buy a wonderful local ice cream now.
But what about the next generation? We have a whole bunch of kids coming up that literally don't know what they're missing - how will they know what to reject, what to look for, if they don't know that food can be better?
