tastesgoodwhatisit's Profile
Protected Designation of Origin (PDO)
To me, PDO's make more sense when a food is named after a particular region. Champagne is produced from grapes grown in the Champagne region of France, Kobe beef comes from Kobe, etc.
But to take the feta example - I can understand that feta in Greece may be different than feta produced in other countries in the same region. But what the PDO does is legally say that Greece does feta 'right', and that the other countries are doing it wrong, and therefore can't use the name due to their inferiority.
That doesn't make sense to me, particularly if you're talking about political boundaries that have constantly shifted over history. Feta produced two kilometres over the Greek border, in a region that used to be part of the same political entity couldn't be called feta, in spite of a shared history.
I also suspect that this sort of designation has less to do about the superiority of Greek feta over other countries' production of the same cheese than it does about who had the strongest lobby group or influence with the people who made the decision.
Protecting the name "Greek feta", on the other hand, makes sense.
"Water Weight"
I would say that, immediately after drinking, you will. There is some energy used in consuming the food, but it's not all that much. For pure water, you'll lose most of that weight in a short time period through sweat and urine, as there is no caloric content. For food, your body will absorb some of it to either burn or store as fat, and get rid of the rest, either in the bathroom or through sweat. So there might be a small gain of weight, but not the full pound.
You could test this pretty easily, though, with an accurate enough digital scale. Weigh yourself. Drink a pound of water. Weigh yourself again. Repeat the exercise on different days to get a good statistical sample (as you're probably pushing the accuracy of a bathroom scale).
Calculate the different between the weights for each measurement. Then calculate the mean and standard deviation of the differences. If you measure a difference, and the standard deviation is significantly lower than that difference then you've experimentally verified it. If the difference you measure is smaller or comparable to the standard deviation, though, your scale isn't accurate enough, or you need more measurements.
Unidentified Chicken Part
Ah, that sounds possible.
The market where I buy chicken kills them and cuts them up on site (sometimes while you're waiting), so they've got pretty much everything on display.
Unidentified Chicken Part
There's some sort of internal bit of the chicken that's about the size of a large marble, is bright orange coloured and appears to come in a cluster. Does anyone know what this is? I can identify everything else spread out on the chicken counter at the market.
"Least Favorite Vegetable" Poll
I have a recipe for a Moroccan eggplant 'jam' that's amazingly good. You fry slices of eggplant until golden, drain, chop finely and cook again with sauteed onions, garlic, various seasonings, lemon juice, a bit of sugar and fresh parsly.
Granola - can molasses be substituted for honey?
I use molasses in granola, but not as the only sweetener - I think all molasses would be too overpowering.
You can make a sugar syrup out of white sugar, if you're stuck for a liquidy sugar component.
I usually use about 1 tablespoon of molasses for about 1/3 cup honey, and pair it with cinnamon, cloves, ginger, and very finely shredded (but not grated) orange zest.
Tater Salad: How Do You Take It?
I prefer a vinegar based potato salad, with chopped onions and celery, and ideally bacon bits, and some of the bacon grease mixed in to the dressing for flavour. Red wine vinegar and a bit of dijon mustard, plus some chopped fresh herbs and a bit of garlic in the dressing.
Kraft "real Parmesan cheese"
I can see the point if the common usage of the word pre-dates the legislation - ie, where you've got 100 years of calling a certain type of cheese feta, and a certain type of wine champagne, and then another country announces that they've passed a law that says you can't do that anymore. Changing it requires both passing local laws that ban the word use, and zealously enforcing them until it sticks.
Inside the EU they can pass those laws, but they can't require other countries to follow them outside of the EU.
Airline Meals
If you're flying from the continental US, it's a domestic flight, and those don't generally feed you for free unless you're flying business class. I'm pretty sure they don't have to - I've flown from Toronto to LA (five hour international flight) with no free meal.
Looking for ideas for radishes and cilantro (don't have to be together)
Japanese cooking uses daikon (the big white radishes) a lot in cooked dishes - I think the smaller radishes would work well in the same recipes. They're wonderful stewed with pork or beef, in a soy based sauce.
Turkey Burger seasonings and moisteners
The trick I discovered in an Italian cookbook for meatballs and the like was to use breadcrumbs (or stale bread) soaked in milk and mixed into the ground meat, to produce very tender moist results.
What are your FAVORITE meals or dishes to enjoy when it's HOT outside?
Homemade mango popsicles.
Why do you continue shopping at CostCo? I am underwhelmed. What do you appreciate about the warehouse store?
We make back our annual fee in cornflakes. We can sometimes find them at the grocery store, in very small boxes at very high prices. For the same price as a small box at a regular store, we can get a jumbo pack at Costco.
For me, Costco is a place where I can get stuff that I can't get affordably elsewhere -coffee beans, canned tomatoes, Western style sausages, bacon, breakfast cereal, olive oil, large jugs of vinegar, some types of cheese, tortillas, frozen berries, lamb. Plus, as we take a cab home after a Costco run, it's convenient for stuff like dish and laundry detergent.
And I've bought a few one-off items, like a bread maker, and a sewing machine. It's also a good place for single malt scotch at a reasonable price, and sometimes they have good beer.
I rarely buy the fresh stuff - it comes in sizes too large for two people. And I don't even look at the pre-prepared stuff, as we don't have much freezer space, and don't really eat that sort of thing anyways.
leftover wonton skins
Fill with a little bit of mozarella cheese, deep fry until crispy, dust with powdered sugar, and eat when still almost hot enough to burn your mouth.
A larger version of these is the special desert at one of my favourite restaurants, and has to be ordered in advance.
"Least Favorite Vegetable" Poll
Canned mushrooms. I love them fresh or dried, raw or cooked, but not the ones out of a can.
Other than that, I like pretty much every vegetable I've tried, and I'll try anything in the vegetable domain. Bitter melon took a couple of tries, but I love it now. Brussel sprouts are okay if cooked properly, I've learned to like cooked turnip although I didn't like it as a kid.
I'm sure there are vegetables out there I haven't tried, but they are mainly vegetables I've never encountered - my response to seeing something unidentifiable in the market is to buy it, bring it home, Google it and cook it.
I haven't tried Jerusalem artichokes, but will if I find them - I've had a related vegetable, the English name of which escapes me, but the Chinese name translates as stone worm vegetable.
"Least Favorite Vegetable" Poll
I love both, but I don't think eggplant tastes anything like other types of squash - the texture and taste are totally different.
How far are you willing to drive for a good restaurant?
Half an hour to an hour travel time, one way, no problem. But I live in a large city, so if something isn't walking distance or a very short bus ride away, an hour is not that unusual a travel time.
dried seafood
Small dried shrimp are great in a lot of cooking - try them in fried rice, for example.
Is there any value to dehydrated scallops?
They're wonderful when cooked well, however, they are a totally different ingredient than fresh scallops (so you can't rehydrate them and use them in a fresh scallop recipe).
How are meals served in your home?
There's just me and my husband.
At the dinner table most of the time (the exception being the occasional take out meal or casual leftovers). Sometimes from serving dishes, sometimes directly from the stove, sometimes plated, depending on the dish - on the weekends it's usually a little fancier. If it's from the pot, the pot is left in the kitchen. Leftovers and pre-made dishes are often served out of the storage dish.
Dinner is usually a protein dish, a starch dish, and at least two vegetable dishes, one of which is usually a salad of some sort (sometimes in combination, like a casserole). We often have soup as a side dish.
We rarely do courses, unless I'm cooking an Italian style meal, which is usually on the weekends. We never eat dessert at the dinner table - if we do have something sweet, it's usually an hour or two later.
We don't have a dishwasher, and dishes have to be washed under a running tap (rather than filling up the sink to let stuff soak), so minimizing dishes is a consideration.
What 20 dishes should I know how to make without a recipe?
You have to learn *how* to cook somewhere. Randomly throwing foods into a pot to see if it makes something that tastes good is an extremely inefficient way of learning to cook. I've met people who cook by that method - they think they're wonderfully creative, but in reality they are just bad cooks.
There are two main ways you can learn how to cook without a recipe and still get tasty food. One is to have someone teach you - like learning as you helped your parents as a kid. You aren't using a textbook, but you have a personal tutor leading you through it instead.
The other is to use recipes. After you've cooked for a while and can follow the recipe exactly you can start varying it and modifying it. After doing that for a variety of dishes and cooking techniques you can start working without recipes. But it takes time and practice.
I rarely use recipes. But I will when I want to make a specific dish I haven't made before, and I usually do for baking and other more chemistry sensitive cooking techniques (candy, jam, etc).
Cooking for the Week
I would try making one or two big batches of freezable stuff [spaghetti sauce, chili con carne, chicken tomato stew, beef or pork based stewed dishes, lasagne, etc] each weekend, and freeze in single meal portions. That way, after a few weeks you'll have a good variety of dishes, and can cycle through them over the course of a month or two. Some types of soup freeze well - ones based on roasted, pureed vegetables particularly. Rice freezes beautifully, as do beans - try a chickpea curry, beans and rice, etc. Filled pasta and dumplings freeze well, and are best made on the weekends - use pre-made dumpling wrappers to make ravioli or tortellini.
Then you can make a variety of stuff for keeping in the fridge for that week. Pre-wash and peel vegetables for salad (lettuce, cucumbers, celery, carrots, cherry tomatoes, green and red peppers, etc). Make some vegetable dishes, making enough of each for at least two nights [eg, roast beets, sauteed green beans and mushrooms, creamed corn, marinated mushroom salad, stir-fried spinach, roast squash, sour cabbage etc]. Make a pot of soup (without a lot of noodles, as they will absorb all the liquid over night), cook some mashed potatoes or boiled potatoes, and so on.
Doing a big roast on the weekend is a good idea. You can freeze this too - one trick is to slice your roast chicken or beef or pork, and layer the slices with a bit of gravy or stock before freezing. That way, you can microwave it to heat, and it will be juicy and flavourful.
Pasta can be boiled the night you need it, and bread can be picked up as needed. Rice cookers are great - you can start the rice as soon as you get home, and then go about making salad, setting the table and heating up other stuff, and eat as soon as its done, without having to pay attention to it. You can do things like cumin rice (add whole cumin, a bit of tumeric, salt and butter), tomato rice (substitute some tomato juice for some of the water, and add some chopped green onion and pre-cooked bacon).
You can augment your pre-cooked stuff with very fast dishes - steaming vegetables in the microwave, chilling a can of diced tomatoes to use as a side dish, silken tofu salad, pan frying sausages, etc.
So you can eat the pre-cooked meals earlier in the week, do a fast cook yourself one night when you have more time (egg based meals are great for this), and eat the frozen main courses later in the week.
There are some things that don't work well for cook-ahead. Anything deep fried is much, much better the day of. Crispy roast stuff will taste okay the next day, but loses the nice texture (eat all the chicken skin the night you roast it). I find some salads, particularly dressed ones, go slimy after a day or two. Baked potatoes taste fine the next day, but the texture is inferior. Things like scrambled eggs or pancakes need to be freshly made.
Where should an aspiring cook begin?
Can you give an example of the kind of 'complicated' stuff that you try and fail at? That will be helpful for calibrating. And what kind of dishes you want to learn, so we can suggest an easy to hard chain of dishes.
One option is to pick a basic dish you like to eat - something like spaghetti, or beef stew, or a casserole. Read some recipes on blogs, watch a few videos, then make it yourself. Make a not of what didn't work. Make it again a week later, and try to fix that problem, make notes. Make it again, a week later. Repeat until you're happy with it. Then you can move to something in the same style, but more complicated. Say, spaghetti sauce -> chili con carne -> beef stew -> Indian curry.
Say for spaghetti sauce - the first time, you have the heat too high and the onions burn. The next time you fix that, but the sauce was too chunky. The next time, you get the sauce nice and smooth, but it's too watery. Then, you get the sauce right, but want to adjust the seasonings.
For basic tips - patience is important, particularly for things like sauteeing, or cooking milk based dishes. It's easy to start browning onions, or heating milk, and get impatient because it's taking too long, turn up the heat, and then have it burn.
Learning to saute onions well is probably good practice. It takes patience and timing to get nicely carmelized but not burnt onions. As you do it, pay attention to the different stages the onions go through as they cook.
When do you tip low (10% or less)
Last time I checked, 15% wasn't a small tip. And a 66% tip is extremely large, but hardly the kind of thing I would fault someone for *not* doing, no matter what their fashion sense is like.
Dip Challenge
There's nam prik - a Thai dish (or rather, class of dishes) that involves a spicy, fairly complex sauce, into which you dip various vegetables and meats. The cookbook "Cracking the Coconut" has a nice recipe. That could make a substantial main dish.
Or do fondue, if you can figure out how to serve it for multiple people.
When do you tip low (10% or less)
Really slow service - the kind where you are waiting half an hour before they even take a drink order (note that this is different from a leisurely meal, like a traditional Italian mid-day meal, where the pace is slow but steady).
Surly or rude service. I don't really want the server to be perky and pretending they are my best friend, but they should be polite - no eye rolling or dramatic sighs, no insults, no audibly discussing the party and our order with their co-workers.
Mistakes, not necessarily. But it is a problem if they make numerous mistakes (forgetting requests, getting orders wrong) or if they make a major mistake but don't apologize, fix it immediately and/or provide some sort of compensation (for example - if they forget someone's entree and one person ends up getting their food after everyone else is finished, they should comp it and apologize).
Older recipes that stand up, and more
The filling is not too difficult, it's the meringue that's fussy. I have an excellent recipe, but I can't successfully transport it to parties without destroying the meringue, so we only eat it at home.
quesadillas for a lunch party at work
Yeah, microwave quesadillas may come out kind of soggy.
If you don't have anything but a microwave at work, I'd make them the night before using a frying pan or oven, and then re-heat them at work.
What the heck happed to Chicken?
I suspect it's a supply and demand thing - chicken breasts are by far the most popular part of the chicken, and the boneless-skinless variety is the most popular type of chicken breast.
If I buy chicken breasts at the supermarket, I can get boneless skinless breasts cut in various sizes, skin on chicken legs, whole or chopped, skin on chopped half chickens, and skin on wings, plus gizzards and hearts. At the traditional market, the default is double breast, skin on, with or without the bone, whole wings, whole hind-quarters, half chicken (cut lengthwise) and whole chicken, plus various heads, feet and internal organs. They'll chop or trim it however I want, though - skin it, joint it, hack it into pieces with a cleaver, etc. The market chicken is way better than the supermarket stuff in taste, too. [As an aside, at the pork stalls, you can choose your pork and fat and have them grind it for you, which is nice.]
