John Francis's Profile
What are you baking these days? May 2012
Anadama bread. Lots of recipes around; I use the one from King Arthur Flour's web site. Slightly sweet from the molasses but it works as a sandwich bread with whatever you put between the siices.
Turkey Burger seasonings and moisteners
Tasty? Just mix in some Old Bay, to taste. I don't measure it, just sprinkle it in. As for moistness, I haven't had a problem as long as I don't overcook, but you could try the meat loaf trick of adding some bread crumbs or some bread softened in milk.
Trader Joe's Yea/Nay Thread - 2nd quarter 2012
I agree. TJ also carries a couple of other brands of veggie burgers which are much better - hope they don't give their own product a monopoly.
But TJ's Vegetable Masala Burgers are a completely different thing. "Burger" is a misnomer; they're vegetable patties spiced Indian style, and totally delicious. I always have some in the freezer.
Help Me Teach My Cousin How to Cook
As others have said, the best bet may be a cookbook that really spells things out - not just the ingredients list but the procedures and estimated times for each step of the process. The cookbook writer who is best about giving all the details and leaving nothing to chance, and who focuses on practical home cooking rather than imitating restaurant cuisine, is Mark Bittman, in his massive "How to Cook Everything." If that's too much for your cousin, there's the brand new "How to Cook Everything: The Basics," which really is basic as well as shorter - 175 recipes with 1,000 photographs in about 500 pages. It may not be the only cookbook she ever needs, but if she goes on to more, you'll have succeeded.
http://content.markbittman.com/node/71
Where do you keep the Kitchen Aid mixer?
Likewise. I use it often enough that getting it out and putting it away would be needlessly tedious.
Knife sharpening for dummies - the accu sharp
I use an AccuSharp on my carbon steel chef's knife and I haven't yet seen any shavings fall off, large or small. Hasn't ruined my blade yet, and I expect the knife to last as long as I do.
recipes using brown rice that taste good?
Is there anything involving brown rice that DOESN'T taste good? I've stopped keeping white rice in the kitchen, I use Trader Joe's brown jasmine rice for everything, even jambalaya and gumbo. You just have to cook it a little longer.
Trader Joe's Yea/Nay Thread - 2nd quarter 2012
TJ's raisin bran is fine with me - a regular buy for several years. No problem with the bran flakes' texture and flavor; a little less sweet than Kellogg's and Post's, but that's OK with me.
Looking for spice rack that holds spice bottles horizontally
Another endorsement for the YouCopia spice rack. It holds a lot of spice and herb bottles, you can put it in a cupboard or on a countertop, and so far it's been quite durable.
Is All-Clad nonstick a waste of money?
For what it's worth, Cooks Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen recommends against spending the money, as pharmnerd says. They use non-stick skillets a lot and wear them out in six months, so they buy good cheap ones. Most recently recommended: T-Fal Professional Total Nonstick Fry Pan, 12.5 inches, $35, with the big red dot in the cooking surface. I go even cheaper with the Cuisinart Hard Anodized 12 Inch Open Skillet, available at Bed Bath & Beyond for $25 - very slick, quite durable.
What to do with old non-stick cookware?
If I decide something isn't usable any more, I wouldn't donate it as is, and I probably wouldn't repair it (if possible) before donating it - in that case I might as well keep it. Throw it away.
What were your FIRST three cookbooks?
In this order:
The James Beard Cookbook
Craig Claiborne, The New York Times Cookbook
James Beard's American Cookery
I still have and use them all.
Need help with my NYC eatinerary
No Indian restaurants? When I travel, that's always on my list, and New York has some very good ones. My favorite is Sapphire on Broadway near 60th Street, convenient to Lincoln Center if you're going to take in a performance. Sapphire's menu goes beyond the usual standards. Others here may have other suggestions.
Also in the Lincoln Center area, Bar Boulud specializes in charcuterie but has a full dinner menu as well. I had coq au vin there last week that was out of this world. And there are plenty of light options if you feel you've had too many heavy meals in too short a time.
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Sapphire
1845 Broadway, New York, NY 10023
Bar Boulud
1900 Broadway, New York, NY 10023
Why do people expect "ethnic" restaurants to be cheap?
Most "ethnic" restaurants are cheap, or at least inexpensive. They are in New York and London and most other big cities I know where some restaurants are very expensive. (So are some high-end sushi places in New York, but that's another story.) I think the question is the wrong way around. Why are some restaurants so absurdly expensive?
Anyone use splatter guards?
Yes. The reason they're made of screen is not to block escaping steam. What they do block is droplets of oil spraying all over the cooktop (and me). This one is large enough to fit over any pan, and its rim prevents it from sliding off:
http://www.amazon.com/Amco-881-13-Inch-Splatter-Screen/dp/B00004RFJR
China made cookware not healthy ?
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/18/china-supor-idUSL4E8DI03K20120218
It may or may not be a safety issue. I haven't seen any other stories about Chinese cookware being a health risk.
Trader Joe's Yea/Nay Thread - 1st quarter 2012 [old]
Less expensive (it's pollock, not halibut) but very tasty: TJ's Battered Fish Nuggets. Pop 'em in the toaster oven.
Pondering new Saute Pan
"I read on Cooks Illistrated that pans 11" and greater don't fit burners very well and tended to not produce even heating in their tests. They did pick a winner, but I'm not a member so I don't know what won their test."
In case nobody else has answered this: the new issue of Cooks Illustrated has a new overview of sauté pans. At the top, for $200+ each, are the Viking Stainless 7-Ply 3-Quart Sauté Pan and (no surprise) the All-Clad Stainless 3-Quart Tri-Ply Sauté Pan. The next step down, Recommended rather than Highly Recommended, are the Cuisinart MultiClad Pro Triple-Ply 3 1/2-Quart Sauté Pan with Lid (narrow cooking surface but otherwise good), a Best Buy for $80, and the Calphalon Tri-Ply Stainless 3-Quart Sauté Pan, marginally better but more costly at $125.
But could you be talking about skillets, not sauté pans? Skillets are measured in inches, sauté pans in quarts.
What Cookware to get?
I'd recommend a skillet rather than a sauté pan as basic - that may be what you have in mind anyway. The curve between bottom and side is friendlier to stirring and flipping, and a 12" skillet has plenty of cooking surface for most uses. You'll sometimes need it to have a lid, which you can sometimes buy as part of the deal.
Nonstick or not? If you do eggs, fish, and the like, nonstick really helps. If you do red meat and poultry, you actually want some of it to stick so you can make a pan sauce. I switch back and forth between a 12" clad metal skillet and a 10" nonstick. Some people are devotees of cast iron skillets; don't use them myself.
A covered sauce pan is also essential, for boiling and steaming vegetables, making hot cereal, lots of things. The size depends on the quantities of food you expect to cook; I use a 2 quart saucepan and also a 1 quart mini-saucepan probably more often than the larger one. Pasta needs a bigger pot, but I hardly ever make.it, and when I do, it's in the smaller shaped variety rather than spaghetti or linguine, so I can get by with the 2-quart saucepan.
My 12" stainless clad skillet is so old that it's not made any more, and I don't remember the name of the maker. Cooks Illustrated magazine is the Consumer Reports for cookware, they really test the stuff; their best buys as of 2007 were the Calphalon Tri-Ply Stainless 12-Inch Omelette Pan, for $64, and the Farberware Millennium 18/10 Stainless Steel 12-Inch Covered Skillet, for $70. Whether these are still made, I don't know. CI recommends against cheaper flimsier skillets, which don't distribute the heat evenly.
I also use the Tramontina Restaurant Pro nonstick 10-inch open skillet, for which I've bought a lid; the Calphalon Contemporary Nonstick 2-1/2-Quart Shallow Saucepan with Lid; and the Simply Calphalon Nonstick Hard-Anodized Aluminum 1-Quart Saucepan with Lid. The non-stick skillet doesn't stay non-stick forever, so I buy 'em cheap and replace them every few years.
When sautéing in the skillets I use an Amco 13" Splatter Screen, better than the others because the rim curves down to hold it in place. Better than getting oil or fat sprayed all over the stovetop (and me). If you don't find it in the stores, you can order it from amazon.com.
Hope this isn't too late to be helpful!
Recently converted Home Cook
My father did the cooking at home when I was growing up, and I've no complaints about the food! I asked him later how he did it, and he said he used the Fanny Farmer cookbook and other recipe sources he couldn't remember. Later he got more ambitious, and I saw "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" on the kitchen shelf and sometimes in use. Not exactly a role model, but it kept me from assuming that home cooking is woman's work - it is, but it's men's work too.
Took up cooking myself when I started living on my own in the late '60s. My go-to cookbooks then were James Beard's and Craig Claiborne's, and I still have them and use some of their recipes. But Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything" and "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian" are the cookbooks I use most, along with a few specialized books (bread, Louisiana cuisine), and the Internet is a fabulous source of practical and good-tasting recipes. Bittman is my choice because he really spells out quantities and times that other cookbook authors can sometimes be too casual about, and provides many alternatives to basic recipes, which encourages me to make up my own.
Cookbooks are cumbersome and web downloads are tiresome to keep track of, so I use a program called "Living Cookbook" to store and retrieve the recipes I use, or want to use. I can print out the ones I have in mind for a meal without juggling a bunch of different sources; that way I've built up a cookbook of my very own. "Living Cookbook" comes with hundreds of recipes, nearly all of them useless to me, but they're easy to ignore. There's other software for the same purpose, but LC is highly rated and suits me.
You can read a review here:
http://meal-planning-software-review.toptenreviews.com/living-cookbook-review.html
And you can download the program and try it out for 30 days here:
http://www.livingcookbook.com/
How many different knives do you use daily ?
Daily: always a chef's knife and often a paring knife. Less often a bread knife. Lots of other knives in the drawer, but they don't get much use. Never used a cleaver or a Japanese knife and don't own any.
Buying a professional chef knife
I use a 40-year-old Sabatier Chef au Ritz carbon steel knife, 9.5" blade. It holds its edge very well and sharpens up easily with a Chef's Choice blade sharpener. It was recommended in the original Cooks' Catalog of 1974 and apparently isn't made any more. And "Sabatier" is not an exclusive brand name and is no guarantee of quality. But I can certainly recommend a carbon steel blade of that size, unless you'd find it unwieldy, or unless you'd prefer the convenience of stainless steel, easier to take care of but harder to sharpen.
Cooks Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen has recommended the Forschner Victorinox Fibrox 8" Chef's Knife for years and say they use it in their own kitchens. 10" and 12" blades are also available. Its stamped stainless steel blade may not be the very best quality, but it's easy to care for and at $40 (less at many vendors) it's good value for money.
Trader Joe's Yea/Nay Thread - 1st quarter 2012 [old]
Tried them last year. Put them in the toaster oven for the number of minutes but they were still cold at the center - didn't think to use the thermometer. The turkey meatloaf part of it isn't savory enough and the mashed potatoes felt more reconstituted than real.
Trader Joe's Yea/Nay Thread - 1st quarter 2012 [old]
Agreed about the falafel chips. TJ's frozen falafel is great stuff, always have some on hand, but the falafel chips aren't up to it.
While I'm at it, the Original Hummus Dip isn't what it was - too soupy and the flavor's a bit off. Maybe just a bad batch. The organic hummus is still fine.
Senior discounts
The Associated supermarket on Myrtle Street in Brooklyn gives a 10% discount to seniors on Wednesdays. I don't know if this is a policy for the whole Associated chain.
Where have all the good, reliable UWS Chinese restaurants gone?
In the Lincoln Center area, Shun Lee Restaurant and Shun Lee Cafe are still open on 65th Street and still good. The last I looked, the Empire on Columbus Ave. at 68th was still there - nothing wonderful but OK; they've done Japanese as well as Chinese for years. However, the Chinese on Amsterdam near 65th, I forget the name, is gone because they took the building down.
Quick Lunches from Trader Joe's - Please Share Your Favs!
vegetable masala burgers - not really a burger, no bun needed (or wanted), but a savory veggie patty. Frozen; heat and eat.
Nonstick Skillets - Comparative Reviews
I appreciate your response but I'm sorry, it just isn't helpful. Nobody can be their own judge of a product before they buy, can they? Especially one that's supposed to work well over an extended period. And I certainly don't want to throw my money away in a trial-and-error pursuit of a better nonstick skillet than the Simply Calphalon pan I bought on CI's recommendation. User reviews of individual products on Amazon or wherever don't fill the bill.
No, what I need is a formal comparison based on purposeful testing, in place of ATK's which I can't trust any more. Maybe someone else knows where we can find such a thing?
Nonstick Skillets - Comparative Reviews
So many nonstick skillets our there, that I need a good source for choosing among them. The America's Test Kitchen publications seemed to offer just that - they describe rigorous tests they put cookware through, and explain their rankings in objective terms. So I've relied on them.
But their recommendations for inexpensive nonstick skillets are constantly changing, and in one case they've directly contradicted themselves. The Simply Calphalon Nonstick 12-inch Omelette Pan was the top recommendation in Cook's Country, April 2008:
"Oven-safe to 400 degrees. this pan performed well, thanks in part to its light weight and the even, gentle slope of the sides. The "nicely angled" handle stayed cool, the latest model’s addition of a silicone grip lends added comfort. This pan has a relatively small capacity. $50.00"
But in a PDF from the Cooks Illustrated site dated March 2007 - a year earlier - the same pan is Not Recommended:
"Neither chicken nor onions browned sufficiently; fish was more successful. On the whole, it was outperformed by cheaper pans."
So the same test kitchen promoted the same pan from Not Recommended to Recommended almost immediately and without explanation.
I got one and it was OK for a year or so, but the hard-anodized aluminum surface wasn't that slick to start with and is pretty much shot, so I'm in the market again for a nonstick skillet. But which to choose? For lack of a better guide, I turned to America's Test Kitchen again.
In the last issue of Cooks Illustrated, a rating of inexpensive nonstick skillets seems to promise a comparison of the new pans with the Calphalon, but does no such thing, while the comparison with the expensive All-Clad nonstick is useless to me. Besides, the winning skillet, T-FAL Professional Total Nonstick Fry Pan (12.5 inches), apparently doesn't exist. T-FAL's web site offers a line called Professional and another called Signature Total, but none called Professional Total. Cooks Illustrated lists a source for a Professional Total pan, www. maijer.com, but the site lists no such fry pan but a sauté pan which is apparently not the same thing..
The confusion is reflected in Cooks Illustrated's own bulletin board:
http://www.cooksillustrated.com/ibb/posts.aspx?postID=309901&postRepeater1-p=1#310699
So depite all the blowing of its own trumpet, ATK is not the reliable guide it purports to be, at least not on nonstick skillets. But I need some serious and reliable comparative review to guide me through the jungle of competing nonstick skillets. Can anybody recommend a better one?
