gfr1111's Profile
Why is the Olive Garden so reviled?
The pear, gorgonzola and shrimp ravioli rejection said it all, didn't it? (Or maybe it was pear and shrimp ravioli with with a gorgonzola sauce?) This was from the "Wall Street Journal" link above. Anyway, people liked it in tests, but complained about it in the restaurants and, after disappointing quarterly earnings, management quickly yanked it from the menu. As management concluded in connection with another dish, the concept was too "food forward."
By the way, I don't think Olive Garden is awful, unlike many of the posters here, just unimaginative and not very authentic--sort of like Taco Bell is an American offshoot of Mexican. Olive Garden is Italian for Americans who want to play it safe--very safe.
Cooked chicken bones for stock
All the recipes which I have seen for stock of any kind call for roasting the bones in the oven for about forty minutes before putting the bones in water to make the stock. Are there recipes out there that do not call for the roasting? I though it was a standard requirement.
Dispatching live lobsters?
Several people here have suggested methods for a quick dispatch, which, at least, works for them. The three that seem to stand out are stabbing the lobster in the back of the head, even with or just in back of the eyes, with a ten inch chef's knife. The second is cutting or, as Passadumkeg put it, "ripping" them in half, separating the tail from the rest of the lobster. The third is immersing them in cold, fresh water. The writers recommended the immersion in fresh water have not really stayed in the room to determine how long this takes, except that one wrote that this was very quick when he immersed the lobster in his friend's fish tank.
I don't want these animals to suffer, and boiling or steaming live seems incredibly cruel. The sticking them in fresh water seemed like good solution to me until another writer said that this would make their cells explode internally, which sounds incredibly painful.
How about this?: immerse them in drinkable alcohol. You can get this at any liquor store. The flavor is neutral and, after you killed them, you could rinse off the alcohol with salt water. I've got to believe that alcohol would be poisonous to them and kill them within a minute or less. If immersed in alcohol for a minute or less, the the cells would not have time to explode. I am not saying that this is an ideal solution, but surely it would be better than boiling them or steaming them. I've never tried this, so I do not know whether it would work.
We're still talking about asphyxiation and poisoning but I think it would work very quickly.
The knife in the back of the head works for me sometimes, but other times, just makes the lobster angry and forces me to split him in half, but this screws up cooking him correctly.
How long is Tahini good for?
How about freezing it in small quantities? Will that work or is it a bad idea?
Fourteen ounces is the new pound
The down-sizing of the pound happened in the 1970s. In the 1980s packages returned to their original size. The down-sizing was due to the lousy Jimmy Carter economy. I predict that we will know that the Bush/Obama recession is truly over when packages of beans, "half-gallons" of ice cream, etc., return to their true pound and half gallon sizes. But it's a sneaky thing to do. Do the producers of 1.75 quart ice cream containers and 14 ounce packages of beans think that we don't notice? It makes me think less of the manufacturer.
The best hot dog toppings -- Discuss!
I think it is highly appropriate that the Chicago dog is mentioned in the fourth comment down out of a lengthy thread. It is the epitome of "hot-dogginess" to me. As a traditionalist, I will always accept it with the neon-green relish without complaint, but I must confess that I think traditional dark green relish has more flavor. My favorite place to have it is from the bookstore/luncheonette (probably long gone by now) or a roving hotdog truck at the University of Chicago. (I know the trucks are still roving, even after all these years.)
As for the negative aspersions cast on the Chicago pizza, if you don't think of it as a pizza, but rather as a hot sausage (as opposed to mild sausage), tomato, and mozzarella pie, you will like it better. Made well, it is delicious, just not really a pizza.
Braunschweiger, how do you like tov eat it?
I like Braunschweiger between two slices of pumpernickle bread, with dill pickle slices, raw onion, mayo, and sometimes Tabasco sauce. Sometimes I mix in a teaspoon of brandy. What amazes me about this stuff is that adults routinely offered me Braunschweiger and liverwurst (interchangeable to me) as a filling for sandwiches when I was a little kid. What kid likes liver? And yet normally insightful adults thought that I would like the stuff. But their persistence paid off. I love it now. It just took until I was a teenager to appreciate it.
those Park Slope parents wanting to ban the Good Humor type ice cream truck
Thanks for clarifying what the heck the OP was talking about. I love New York (well, Brooklyn in this case) and New Yorkers but they do have a tendency to think that the rest of the country follows all of their local news. Not so. As for the story itself, selling ice cream in the park seems okay, but walking into a (I assume) fenced in playground seems a bit much.
In search of the giant burger near Tampa
So how did it go with your Belgian friend? What burgers did he try? What did he think? When I read your comment, I thought your friend was talking about a huge but normal burger (e.g., less than two pounds), but other people thought he meant some kind of megaburger, not really intended for one person. Which was it?
Boca: Used to be "Smoke" in Hyde Park in Tampa--how is it?
Thanks to all of you. (Hi, rhnault!) I've got to give this place a try. I hope that more Chowhounders will continue to comment. CFishman, I've been in Tallahassee and remain there week days, though I still consider Tampa home. (The market for 61 year old lawyers is limited.) Yeah, Pane Rustica, the Refinery, Wimauma, and now Boca are all serving what I would call "gourmet southern," at least with about half their menu. and they are doing a great job. To your list of avant garde terms, CFishman, could be added "organic," and "seasonal," although I don't know whether this restaurant has used these terms. They are certainly used everywhere now.
Noice, thanks for the detailed review. It told me a lot. I love it when Chowhounders give a detailed review like that. It really gives one a sense of the restaurant.
Best Sarasota Pizza... Dometrio's, El Greco, Valentino's or...?
Someone posted on this thread in April of 2012 and I ran across it. It wanted to update this entry. Sadly, Honeycrust sold its store around 2009 and is no longer in business.
Help Me Teach My Cousin How to Cook
I recommend Alton Brown's "I'm Just Here for the Food." It approaches cooking as the application of heat to food. Each chapter is divided into a particular cooking technique: boiling, steaming, frying, baking, etc. It is more of a techniques book than a cookbook but each technique has accompanying recipes. It is very good for a beginner because the beginner can read the theory of a particular cooking technique and then apply that theory to the very good recipes that Mr. Brown applies. Obviously, the reader need only read one chapter, rather than the whole book, to launch into the recipes in that section. It is funny, too, definitely an added benefit.
Boca: Used to be "Smoke" in Hyde Park in Tampa--how is it?
I live in Tampa, but for the last 18 months, I have been in North Florida most of the time (5 days out of 7). While there, restaurants in Tampa keep changing, WITHOUT MY PERMISSION! The latest victim I have just encountered (although the change may have happened some time ago) is "Smoke," which I thought was an excellent barbeque place. It was located in Hyde Park. It is now "Boca." Is it any good?
Can i swap out shortening for butter in a white cake recipe?
I just watched an episode of Alton Brown's "Good Eats." Remember, if you substitute butter for shortening, butter contains about 20% water. Shortening is 100% fat. Therefore, you have to increase the amount of butter by 20% to get the same effect as shortening and decrease the amount of liquid you use by 20%.
To further complicate matters, the increases and decreases are based on the weight of the butter and the shortening, which means that you have to weigh the half cup of butter, not just make the calculations, based on volume measurements. Sheesh!
Best Chicken Wings in Tampa Bay
Mild Bill,
Your comment on the one single little container of blue cheese dressing for 20 wings made me laugh, since I have experienced the same thing many times. And, like you, I usually have to order the one that comes with the meal, plus three extras. But this is only for 10 wings.
The following does not apply to the Cop Shop, where I have never eaten, but look forward to trying out. It is just a general comment about what I have experienced elsewhere: If I am going to have to pay extra for the blue cheese dressing, please don't serve ranch dressing with some crumbles of blue cheese dropped into it. Give me honest-to-goodness blue cheese dressing. (You can tell doctored Ranch dressing by its overly sweet taste, the tell-tale large dark flecks of pepper(??), and its glutinous texture.
Also, strangely enough, "wings" should actually be wings, not little drumsticks or other components of a chicken. It actually is possible to get too much meat when wings aren't used. The proportion of meat to carmelized skin is important. (The carmelized skin is a real rarity.)
I recommend the wings at the place at the corner of Country Way and Linebaugh in the Publix plaza, technically in Tampa but very near Oldsmar. It is next to the video rental place that is going out of business, even as I write this. It is called something like, "Raw Bar and Wings," and despite the number of times I've been there, I can't remember its official name. Also, my standards may not be the greatest because the other place I like a lot is Hooters, often criticized here, but which I believe has excellent wings and sauce.
well known brands that just arent as good as in the past
Professor,
Could you please give us your reverse engineered recipe for Aunt Jemima "Original" pancakes?
Thanks.
Name Brand Or Generic?
To answer the OP's questions: I generally buy brand name products, unless I have done a taste comparison and found the generic to be better. (It is amazing how little I have done taste comparisons, considering how effortless it would be and how much money I could save. I guess I am the king of inertia.)
I can't think of anything that I won't buy generic, but when I have bought generic canned vegetables, I have noticed that I seem to be paying for a lot of liquid, rather than actual food. This is probably one of the reasons that I buy brand name most of the time.
As for the difference in cost, obviously I don't think it is worth the switch, since I keep on buying brand name items. And yet, I think it's most inertia.
One notable exception I have found is Publix brand's natural (not processed) cheeses. The company recently instituted a line of cheeses that are imported from whatever country where the cheese is famous and then branded with the Publix brand. (You can find these in the deli section of the store, not the regular cheese section. However, they are not behind the deli counter. They are precut and wrapped in plastic wrap.) These cheeses are exceptional values. In particular the French or Danish (I can't remember) Publix brand blue cheese is a standout--exceptional blue cheese flavor, a nice, solid texture, and not overwhelmed with salt. Similarly, I have not found ANY camembert that compares in taste and texture with the Publix brand imported from France, and it costs half to two thirds as much as the other French camemberts. (A tip: if you buy the imported Publix brand camembert, let it stand at room temperature for an hour before serving. It makes a huge difference in the taste and texture.)
Do you know of flavors that disappear while cooking and have you developed strategies to retain them?
If you take a bulb of garlic and bake it in the oven, the regular garlic flavor disappears and a very mild and sweet flavor takes its place. (Okay, admittedly, there is still a slight hint of garlic flavor.) This "heat kills the flavor of garlic" principle carries over into other things that I cook. I find that anytime I subject garlic to heat for about five minutes or more (like in a frying pan with oil), I start losing the flavor of the garlic. A typical example of this is when I add, perhaps, ten cloves of garlic to chili. There is hardly any garlic flavor left after I simmer the chili an hour or more.
Another example is if I add beans or, strangely enough, bean sprouts, to a dish, the flavors become muted, despite the fact that just after adding them, they were quite strong. This is particularly true garlic and herbs and ginger. (I have taken to just omitting bean sprouts from my Chinese recipes.)
Can you think of other examples of this principle in action? If so, how do you deal with it to retain or put back the flavors you want in the dish?
Bourdain in San Francisco for Layovers
So, please let us in on the big secret. What is the Korean's place name?
Foodie destinations in Florida?
Day 29: Les Chefs de Paris (Disney). High quality French food.
Day 30: Victoria and Albert's (Disney). Continental cuisine cooked in superior fashion.
This leaves Day 31, which I will leave to some one else.
Indonesian food in Florida
Unfortunately, Cafe Kita closed about two or three years ago, shortly after I discovered it. The last time I checked, the location was occupied by a Thai restaurant of a different name.
Suggestion to people who dine out in groups and get separate bills
In the 1970s I taught high school English and was the school's resident foodie. As a result, my boss asked me to select the locations for our twice-a-year department luncheon for about five years. It was a big school and had about 30 English teachers. We were poorly paid and my coworkers insisted on separate checks. Therefore, I was saddled with the unenviable responsibility to find a restaurant that (a) served no "weird" food (I was practically lynched the year I set the luncheon at a creperie--never did that again!) and (b) would issue separate checks.
At a time when the economy was doing extremely poorly (thank you, Jimmy Carter), many restaurants still declined the business, rather than issue separate checks. It taught me a lesson about how strongly restaurateurs HATE separate checks. Frankly, when I first started arranging for restaurants, it never even occurred to me that this would be a problem.
Your point about the POS systems is well taken and is your suggestion that people come with small bills in large quantities.
Decent casual restaurant near Tampa airport?
Magiesmom,
It sounds like Arco Iris may fit the bill nicely, but just so there are no surprises, Arco Iris has good Cuban food in a diner-like setting. The floors are old. The tables are old. The place has furniture that seems to harken back to the 1950s. I'd certainly go there for the food but I want you to know what you are going to be getting.
An immense shopping mall called "International Plaza" is extremely close to the airport and has a good range of chain and non-chain restaurants. At least, if the non-chain restaurants are actually chain restaurants, they are chains I have never head of. Almost all of these restaurants are more upscale than Arco Iris, but much less representative of Tampa food.
Tampa recommendatons please (Researched!!)
Thanks for your opinion, Indiefoodie. It is always interesting to hear what experienced people from out of town think of our restaurants. I note that 6 out of 10 restaurants on your original list (December 8, 2011) failed to make your list of restaurants actually patronized. I thought your original list was excellent. Perhaps on another visit, you could go to the rest of the restaurants on your original list?
However, I thought the places which you did visit were a representative sample of good to excellent Tampa restaurants.
~ The Ongoing Problem of Culinary Customs -- Does anyone know of a site where you can find recipes based on flavor profile? ~ [moved from General Topics]
I am not quite clear what you are after, but I do recommend "Culinary Artistry" and "The Flavor Bible" by Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page, which discuss at length what ingredients go with other ingredients and why. For example, basil goes with tomato and creates a certain flavor profile. Peanut butter goes with chocolate, etc. However, these authors go into much more detail, using a much longer set of possible ingredients.
Astounding method for shucking corn
Thanks! This is an interesting tip. Eight minutes seems like a lot of time in the microwave for two ears of corn. Does the corn get over cooked in that period of time? Do the husks adequately protect the corn? Does the corn then require further cooking? I'll be curious to find out.
Cheap but decent knives for single, irresponsible guy
TrishUntrapped,
"Cook's Illustrated" had a terrific evaluation of knife sets in the November/December 2011 issue. Although it is only December 2 now, "Cooks Illustrated" regards it as "last month's issue" and is promoting its January/February 2012 issue on its website. There is a place you can click on to review past issues, but it is in small print and a little hard to find. (It's on the left hand side of the first page which you come to.) There is also a video you can click on which gives you much useful information.
The bottom line was that they did not like knife sets because they said that retailers wanted more pieces so that a consumer could count the pieces and conclude that he/she was getting a good deal. Therefore, the knife manufacturers created new knife styles, just to be able to add to the sets. Generally, these are called "utility knives," but are sometimes labeled with specific names, like "tomato knife," "citrus knife," or "sandwich knife." According to the magazine, these knives are just filler and relatively useless. A chef's knife did a better job in every instance in which they tested these additional knives.
Also, to increase the number of knives, the manufacturers had to cut back somewhere to reach the price point required by the retailers, so the manufacturers shortened the lengths of some of the knives. For instance, the ten inch bread knife became an eight inch bread knife, which the magazine said was useless for cutting many loaves of bread because the width of the bread is wider than the width of the knife.
"Cooks'" solution was to put together its own "a la carte" bargain knife set, consisting of the following: 3 and 1/4 inch Victorinox Fibrox paring knife ($4.95), 8 inch Victorinox Fibrox Chef's knife ($29.95), 10 and 1/4 inch Victorinox Fibrox curved blade bread knife ($24.95), 12 inch Granton edge Victorinox Fibrox slicing knife ($49.95), 6 inch Victorinox Fibrox straight boning knife ($19.95), Bodum Bistro Universal knife block ($44.95), and J.A. Henckels International kitchen shears ($14.95).
Interestingly, the magazine does not really recommend even an "a la carte" set like the above, concluding that you only need to have three knives: an 8 inch chef's knife, a paring knife, and a bread knife, although they did like the scissors for dealing with deboning chickens. Everything else is just frippery!
does this need refrigeration or not? [moved from Home Cooking]
ddhirlahelix3hound,
I agree with jw615. The cake will be fine. Neither the cream cheese frosting nor the caramel will be a problem. Imagine the packets as cans and you will see what jw615 is getting at. The packets were sterile before packaging and the cream cheese and caramel were probably sterilized after the packets were sealed. So this is, essentially, canned food.
Imagine packets of ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise sitting in a bin at your local fast-food joint. They are at room temperature and sit there day after day without anyone batting an eyelash.
Enjoy!
' Good " olive oil
Here is a story for you: We stayed at a working vineyard/hotel (an "agriturismo" in Italian) an hour's drive outside of Florence in Tuscany, "Tenuta di Sticiano." The vineyard also produced its own olive oil. When leaving, I asked the manager what was the difference between the two differently named extra virgin olive oils. She explained that one was made from one mixture of olives and the other from a different set of olives. They both had different flavor characteristics. So I asked what the different flavor characteristics were. One was mild, the way tourists like it. The other was much stronger, the "we" (Italians) like it, she told me.
I've found this dichotomy most places among olive oil fans. It seems to happen with most foods. People move from milder to stronger versions. They move from white wine to red wine, milk chocolate to dark chocolate, velveeta to muenster to slightly aged cheddar to more aged cheddar, domestic blue to French bleu, etc.
In the EVOO area, there are delightful (but mild) blends that are decent for cooking (although many fans will tell you not to use EVOO at all for cooking--the flavor is destroyed with the application of heat). I disagree with this opinion. Anyway, for normal cooking, I like Publix brand (here in the southeast), Vigo (another Florida brand based in Tampa), Colavita (a national brand, I think).
For finishing oils (not for cooking, just using as a topping for food), "Cooks Illustrated" recommended Columela Extra Virgin and Lucini Italia Premium Select EVOO. (And I like the Tenuta di Sticiano brands, but getting them, of course, would be a problem, I suspect. But keep your eyes open. You never know!)
New Indian in Sarasota
I think that you nailed it. I don't think that I have ever seen an Indian restaurant succeed where the clientele is elderly. (I am 60 and qualify as "elderly" myself.) College towns, big cities, concentrations of people under 35--yes, but small towns and elderly populations--no. Anyway, I''ll try them out the next time I am in Sarasota. The restaurant sounds great.
I do have a question about the name of the restaurant. I've heard of the seven hills of Rome but no India-connected seven hills. Can anyone enlighten me?
