jerryd916's Profile
Losing faith in cast iron cookware
I use my cast iron skillets for ALMOST everything, but even I wouldn't dare to try to make a fried egg in one, no matter how well-seasoned. The trick is to USE IT! Over and over again! I never scrub mine with anything other than a sponge. I rinse it in hot water immediately when I'm done with it, WHILE IT'S STILL HOT! The stuck-on bits come right off that way. Whatever doesn't come right off right away will come off when you soak it. I never soak my cast iron in the sink, I just fill it with hot water and leave it on the stove or the counter for a few hours. I never bother using salt to clean it with, it hasn't really done anything for me. I do avoid soaps on my cast iron, but if it's well-seasoned, you can rinse it with soapy water without any ill effects to the pan, but I wouldn't recommend doing that unless you've had the pan for at least 2 or 3 years and have used it regularly.
I started using cast iron during my several-year-long experiment with Macrobiotics, and since I wasn't eating any animal products during that period, I relied on the cast iron for my iron intake. It would be very hard to overdose on iron from using cast iron cookware even if you're a strict carnivore, however.
I have never noticed any sort of off-taste or smell using cast iron. The restrictions on acidic foods only come into play if you're doing slow-cooked foods like stews or soups, and in those cases I use my enameled cast-iron pots. I have made stews in my cast-iron dutch oven, however, and they come out fine, as long as you don't add tomatoes or other acids. I have found that I can get away with more acidic foods in my cast iron dutch-oven the more I use it, and the more seasoned it gets, but it's still not my pot of choice for stews. I do however cook a lot of Indian food, which can be quite acidic, in my cast iron skillets, and the results are amazing. The Indians have been cooking in cast iron for millenia and it is still their cookware of choice. The trick is that most Indian foods are cooked fairly rapidly, within 30-60 minutes max. I do prefer to sear meats on enamel or stainless, but have done an excellent job on cast-iron as well, and have made wonderful fond sauces and pan gravies in cast iron. I am a big fan of robustly-seasoned food, however, so I can't comment too much on what effect cast iron has on the most delicate and subtle dishes.
And yes, the non-stick surface that develops on cast-iron is indeed pure carbon, which is very slick indeed (carbon powder is used as a lubricant in some precision machinery).
Best of Sacramento - Sacramento Magazine
SacTown magazine has a much more chowhound-oriented "best of" restaurant list. They are clearly the magazine that has a much more up-to-date perspective on the Sac scene. Sacramento Magazine is a dinosaur, published by old-money East Sac country-club-mansion-living blue-hairs who know as much about the MidTown Yuppie crowd as they do about Eskimo social mores. I gave up on Sacramento Magazine when I found out that most of their restaurant reviews were written by people with a financial stake in the restaurant they're reviewing.
REAL eggrolls in Sacramento?
AWESOME tips! I will try these places out pronto! I haven't had much luck finding them anywhere else, and when I make them at home, they always float to the top of the oil and I have a pale non-crispy side to the eggroll. Short of holding each one under the oil until it's evenly browned, I'm not sure what else I can do. Any tips for those days when I get ambitious and make them home-made? I have a pretty killer recipe for the filling, I believe from Ming Tsai.
Kielbasa and sauerkraut -- what do I do now?
Biologically speaking, the treasured dried Eastern European mushrooms discussed here are genetically identical to porcini mushrooms. Most people don't know that Sacramento is heaven for Eastern European foodstuffs. We have nearly 2 dozen Russian/Ukrainian grocery stores in the immediate area. I have found dried mushrooms here identical in taste to the ones my mom used to import from Poland, and they are labeled porcini on the English-language part of the label. I do agree that the imported ones taste better, and it must be the terroir, but the Eastern European-grown ones taste richer than the Italian ones, which in turn taste richer than the domestic ones.
Best of Sacramento - Sacramento Magazine
I bet "The Chinese seafood place on Broadway" is Fortune House...There are dishes on their menu you won't find anywhere else in town, and everything I've tried there is terrific.
REAL eggrolls in Sacramento?
Fair enough, you are correct. They are apparently no more authentic as chop suey or fortune cookies.
REAL eggrolls in Sacramento?
I will definitely give Capitol Tea Garden a try, thanks for the tip!
REAL eggrolls in Sacramento?
Thank you! I do believe that you are the very first one to reply here that has a full grasp of the issue at hand. The picture you post is indeed the type of eggroll I'm still searching for.
REAL eggrolls in Sacramento?
I BEG you to name JUST ONE Sacto Chinese restaurant restaurant that serves eggrolls made with wonton wrappers! That was the whole gist of my original post. It seems like a trivial issue to nearly everyone, which is why Chinese restaurants can get away with such brazen fraud. Rice paper wrappers provide the extra-crispy flaky texture which gives seemingly health-conscious Californians the impression that they are somehow healthier than traditional eggrolls made with wonton wrappers, which provide a thicker slightly chewier yet still crispy crust, which I find infinitely more satisfying. I have made rolls at home, with rice-paper, which are exactly like spring rolls at any Vietnamese, Thai, and truthful Chinese restaurants, and on different occasions I have made real eggrolls using wonton wrappers, which turned out exactly as I remembered eggrolls from the rest of the US were. To confuse the issue, there is a third type of wrap, made with tapioca flour, which resembles the texture of rice paper after being deep fried. Some restaurants may actually be using these types of wrappers, but I have yet to find an authentic Chinese restaurant with any staff that are fluent enough in both English as well as as culinary terms that could accurately tell me what their "eggrolls" were made with.
REAL eggrolls in Sacramento?
The thin-style crisp flaky "eggrolls" are INDEED made with rice paper. I have made them that way at home, but of course I call them spring rolls. Go to any Vietnamese restaurant, and the kitchen staff will indeed confirm for you that they are made with rice-paper, and are EXACTLY what the vast majority of West Coast Chinese restaurants fraudulently call "eggrolls".
REAL eggrolls in Sacramento?
I've been to New Canton on Broadway, the Rice Bowl on Florin, Golden Palace on Truxel, Mayflower on L, plus at least 2 dozen other Chinese places in the Sacramento area, plus at least a dozen others between SF and Sac, and at least another dozen or more in SF, such as Yet Wah. 99% of them serve rice-paper wrapped spring rolls and label them as egg rolls on the menu.
REAL eggrolls in Sacramento?
I've tried Ma Jong's, and was not at all impressed. They also serve springrolls and label them as eggrolls. My fave Chinese places in Sac so far are New Canton on BWay and Rice Bowl on Florin, but they also serve only spring rolls. I guess I'll have to make my own, or wait until I take a trip to visit family back in Chicago.
REAL eggrolls in Sacramento?
One thing I've noticed since moving to CA is that almost all of the Chinese restaurants have stopped making eggrolls. Oh sure, they still have sonmething called "eggrolls" on their menus, but the ones here out West don't taste anything like the ones I've had in other parts of the US. It seems to me that in order to cater to the more "health-conscious" Californians (I use the term health-conscious EXTREMELY loosely here), they have all stopped making their eggrolls with the traditional eggroll wrappers (sheets of dough made of wheat flour, like won-tons) and now use the supposedly "lighter" rice-paper wrappings. To me, this is not an eggroll, but a springroll, and I have nothing against springrolls. I have been known to order springrolls on occasion. But what I usually want is the thicker, slighly chewier texture the won-ton-type wrapper gives to a real eggroll. It seems to make no difference to the staff at any Chinese restaurant I go to here in CA, they always say they are made with flour wrappers, so I am fooled into ordering them, only to be disappointed by getting a plate of springrolls instead. I have never run into any staff at any Chinese restaurant that seems to know the difference.
I may be splitting hairs to some people, but this issue is important to me. I have gone so far as to make my own eggrolls (which ROCK, by the way!), but they are a whole lot of work, and it would be nice to have a place I could stop by after work for a light dinner of real eggrolls. Has anybody run into any Chinese restaurant in Sac that still serves real eggrolls? The only place I've found is Jack-in-the-Box, a place I go to only as a last resort.
