rexmo's Profile
Asian Cafe in Ofallon MO
Wow!
Best Vietnamese food I have had anywhere other than Colorado.
Rumor has it the chef is the guy from pho Star in U City.
I used to look for Viet restaurants when travelling because the lack of anything where I normally get to for lunch or dinner, not anymore.
Barbequed goat recipes?
My dad's coming up on his 80th birthday, and he and I received a Caja China for a birthday gift this month. He recalls from his youth that during the one time per year they'd get much meat to eat, hog slaughtering season, that there'd be a big barbeque. This would begin with cutting down a hickory tree and digging a pit in the ground, and culminate with barbequed pig and goat.
He recalls that the goat was always the first to run out. I would like to take a stab at this in the new cooker. Does anyone have any ideas on what a southern Arkansas goat barbeque preparation from sixty or seventy years ago might look like?
Looking for name of Spanish fish cleaver or machete
The proprietor of the second knife shop in Salamanca I found these in asked if I wanted one for chopping or fileting. They come in two varieties, with the spine of the chopping variety about twice as thick, and much heavier feeling.
Looking for name of Spanish fish cleaver or machete
That would be la hacha de cocina para filetear
Looking for name of Spanish fish cleaver or machete
as seen on recent On the Road Again with M Batali and G Paltrow and on blog In Praise of Sardines.
Any ideas?
Best online translation site for menu Spanish?
Working near Salamanca CL, and finding relatively few of the restaurants have menus with English.
Thinking a hand scanner for those who don't want to give up a copy, then a few minutes with Google, unless there's one that's better at foodie jargon translation.
Awful sushi experience in STL
Worst sushi ever at the Lucky House in St. Peters, near Mid Rivers Mall. I guess I should have known better when I looked at the menu and it was sushi and Chinese food. Maybe the laminated sushi menu and dry erase marker should have been a clue. What I didn'e expect was to wait for more than an hour after ordering for food to arrive in a place less than half full.
The server's excuse when she did bring our order was that the chef was "waiting on rice". These are 3 words I didn't expect to hear my whole life in any Asian restaurant, especially a sushi joint.
The rice was not worth the wait. I don't know whether the chef doesn't know that sushi rice is supposed to be fanned while it cools, or if he thought that he could cool it faster by using more sushi syrup, but the rice reminded me of a snow cone. It was dripping with unabsorbed syrup. Not good. So much sugar that no amount of soy sauce would cut the sweet. No discernible salt seasoning the syrup used.
Fish portions were reminiscent of the local Chinese buffets that put out sushi. Rolls and nigiri were assembled without any wasabi. I don't know if the chef's estimation was that your average customer in that neighborhood is unable to stand wasabi, but the guideline I have read somewhere to avoid wasabi in your soy and rely on the chef to season it for you really didn't work here. Liberal addition of wasabi to the soy didn't help with my mouth coated with sugary syrup.
Two rolls ordered without cucumbers came with. Just guessing here, but I think the rolls were formed with less than ideal pressure, to avoid the syrup oozing out. When the rolls were relieved of their cucumbers, they weren't tight enough to hold up to dipping.
The pinnacle of the experience had to be the pieces with eel that were glazed with sweet terikaki resembling sauce. The sauce was thick, pale, and lacking in any discernible character other than sweet. All it needed was a Bam! from Emeril's powedered sugar shaker to complete the effect, although that would probably have seeded the supersaturation and caused the whole gloppy mess to crystallize into one large lump of sugar. Ick.
Using a grill for other things...
I just bought a pair of cast iron round griddles to try making panini on the grill, haven't seasoned them yet.
charcoal vs. briquets?
I use a local brand, FireKing by Struemph in Steelville MO. The little meat market I frequent carries it in 40 lb bags for $17. It is produced using sawmill scrap. Their operation was featured on Dirty Jobs.
Kind of interested in trying the extruded stuff with mesquite I see at a local latino market.
What do you cook in your panini?
panini fries -- potatoes sliced 1/4" to 3/8", rubbed with olive oil, sprinkled with various seasonings
hash browns
warming up leftover meats without heating the kitchen up with the oven
warming tortillas
grilling/warming burritos
Griddler or grill pan?
Just ordered a couple of these 14" round griddles to use outside, best price I have seen on such.
http://www.vtarmynavy.com/cast-iron-reversible-griddle-pan---14-round.htm
Have a few of the rectangular grill pans from yard sales, thrift shops, etc., but no real reason to use them indoors. I have been using a W Puck panini maker to warm things up instead of microwaving. It definitely gets hot.
Caja China for Roasting Whole Creatures
Sounds like you need to roast smaller creatures.
Best mustard of all time?
Sandwich party tomorrow. What's your favorite mustard preparation? What wild combination have you been jonesing to try?
How to avoid a "livery" flavor in ground beef ?
I had this experience when eating at a Brazilian steak house in S Florida. Tried maybe 6 different cuts off the spits the gauchos brought by. All tasted like liver to me. I went with the salad bar the next time I went back.
yerba mate brewing tips
I have been filling a Swissgold tea infuser full of dry leaves, then hitting them with boiling water. The first brew conjures up latex paint, a little. After that, pretty drinkable.
I wonder how an alcohol extract would be . . . .
Kefir vs Yogurt
I have gathered that real kefir has a much broader spectrum of beneficial microbes than, say, commercial yogurt produced with a relatively pure strain.
The Secret to Fantastic BBQ Chicken
Me old dad's technique for crisp skin yardbird on the gasser is to rub the skin dry with paper towel, sprinkle with season salt and black pepper, cook for about 90 minutes on the top rack with the gas set to low.
Kefir
I like to mix with some flour, let work for a day or so, as a quick sourdough starter.
I have probably used it more in pancakes and breads than anything.
It would still be drinking it, but mixed with mango pulp, makes a good lassi.
Nice replacement for milk in oatmeal.
Seems like Dom's kefir making page had a lot of recipes.
Grains of Paradise? Help me please!
AKA bastard cardomom, sorta suggests use like cardomom. Is used in some Belgian beers, so in a sauce made with such would probably work ok.
Hot water + ______ = a nice drink
some malt, some hops, strain/cool, add yeast, wait a few weeks.
Schizandra berries make a nice tart bev, good chi tonic.
Jicama as a Drink
Te de Jamaica is hibiscus flower, very tart, very red. I have purchased it at a local Cuban/Latin market before.
New Favorite Cut
The picnic is the hock (foot) end of the leg. The butt is the top end of the leg. Together they are a whole pork shoulder. I smoked a whole shoulder for a club barbeque last year. What a mountain of meat, 23 lbs. Had to lose about 4" off the hock to fit it on my grill. In St. Louis, where most of the butt is sliced into pork steaks, it fetches a higher price than the picnic.
Cooking methods I like:
1) rubbed with Elder Ward's rub and smoked low and slow for pulled pork
2) marinated with mojo for lechon asado.
I need a light dessert for my mezes dinner
Brewats, maybe? Or a desert bisteeya? Morrocan, rather than Greek, but anything with filo and nuts is a good start. Come to think of it, one of the Greek festivals in St. Louis serves baklava sundaes, basically baklava crumbs over vanilla ice cream. Over pistachio, probably even better.
Cooking whole pig leg
I did a whole shoulder(butt&picnic) on my large ceramic Grilldome. It was about 23 lbs, and I had to hack about 4" off the hock to get it to fit on the 18" dia. grate. I used Elder Ward's pulled pork rub recipe on it. I'm kinda wondering about cutting a decent wedge out of the side that will be on top, grinding and seasoning this portion, and stuffing the notch with it next time around.
Corned Beef Cuts - Is There a Difference?
I haven't, have only heard of pastrami made from navel being sold. I have requested it at a good butcher shop and dry cured for pastrami, haven't brined for corned beef. An old cookbook I remember looking at, titled something like better than store bought, suggested a cut called flanken for pastrami. Haven't ever seen it for sale either.
Corned Beef Cuts - Is There a Difference?
You'd probably have to corn it yourself, but navel, from the plate makes better pastrami than brisket, so the same likely goes for corned beef.
Recipes for chicken wings
Never made them because of the work involved, but Viet stuffed wings are awesome. They're boned, stuffed with Viet eggroll filling, fried, and served with the dipping sauce made with fish sauce.
delicious corned beef brisket
sliced onions below, dried sliced garlic above, rubbed with sea salt and black pepper, braised for a long time in some wine/beer/juice does it for me.
Roasting jalapenos over high heat; Does it concentrate the spice?
Thoughts:
I imagine that there the chili when harvested contains some capsaisin precursors. These may be "ripened" to give greater heat by cooking.
I have had jalapeno slices dried low and slow in a convection oven that were incredibly fiery.
Cooking an habanero in honey or sugar syrup will produce an astounding amount of hot stuff from a small amount of starting chili.
