Beckyleach's Profile
Overwhelmed by choices! Where MUST we eat for our one week (perhaps ever) in Paris?
You are all so kind and helpful! I forgot one question: my sweet husband has fallen in love with the Julia and Paul Child eat sole meunier scene in her book, and the movie "Julie and Julia." He is dying to have this, as to him--bless his sentimental heart--that meal defines France. Any recommendations as to where we'd have the best luck tracking down something that approximates his fantasy?
Overwhelmed by choices! Where MUST we eat for our one week (perhaps ever) in Paris?
Thank you, Simon and Tulip! We are going to try standing outside Frenchie looking hopeful, some evenings before they open, to see if we can beg an early seating, too, I think. Any opinion on Auberge Nicolas Flamel? I've seen some poor reviews recently, but a friend dined there in March with rave reviews--but she's a die hard Rick Steves groupie, and he can do no wrong, as far as his guides go. ;-)
Overwhelmed by choices! Where MUST we eat for our one week (perhaps ever) in Paris?
Oh, please forgive me, this has been asked before, I know...but there are so many suggestions floating around, my head is spinning. In October, my husband and I will be taking our long-delayed honeymoon (I'd say 31 years is a delay, wouldn't you? ;-) trip to Paris. I last went in 1976; my husband has never been. Given our modest lifestyle, we may never be able to return.
SO, I'm humbly seeking your list of can't miss eating experiences. We will be staying in an apartment in the Marais district. We'll probably be moving around the city a lot during the day (so lunch suggestions---and we're not adverse to making lunch our "big meal"--could be anywhere in the center city) but probably would prefer someplace closer to the apartment for dinners. We are adventuresome eaters; have no aversions. BUT we are hoping the majority of our meals will "traditional" French ones--Breton style, Provencal, Parisian, Alsatian...both seafood and meat, etc.
I'm budgeting up to $200 Euros per person, per day, for everything (transportation, sightseeing, and meals) but we can eat cheaply some days, to make room for splurges on others. So, consider this a request for a Paris Bucket List, of sorts:
IF you had one week to taste Paris--the humble and the almost grand (can't afford grand), the sidewalk cafes and the food stands, venerable old restaurants and up and coming ones, which would you recommend? We don't need to be cutting edge, but we don't want to be Snookered Tourists, either. Atmosphere is nice, but delicious food prepared with integrity is better.
Really want to start using Castiron...is Griswold the way to go?
Yep. I sold every piece of Wagner I collected, after encountering the lighter Griswolds. I have arthritis in my wrist, and yet can heft and wave around (scares my husband;-) my 14 inch ERIE Griswold easily with just one hand.
Really want to start using Castiron...is Griswold the way to go?
Well, I'd add "large logo" to the equation, because I have held, and cooked with both, and I still firmly believe that the large logo (or else slant logo) Griswolds ARE better quality than the later small logo models.
]I have a nearly full set of smooth bottom, LL Griswold (all the skillets except the rare #2, this is) a couple of griddles, and three dutch ovens in various sizes, and I LOVE THEM! Nearly all the other cast iron I "experimented" with during my buying binge has been given away or stored, and I'm happily settled on using just the vintage Griswold and even earlier ERIE (original line by the same company) for all my cast iron cooking needs.
And I have to point out something: most stoves WERE gas powered, during cast iron's hey day.
Consumer Reports Investigates Exploding Pyrex
Wow. Another discouraging example of "things aren't made the way they used to be..." I'm the second generation user of most of the Pyrex in our house. It was cooked in countless times by my mother, since the 1950's, first. And NONE of it has ever broken! In fact, it's the dishware that never ends...it just goes on and on my friends. :-)
There's plenty out there, dirt cheap, still. My local Junque shop sells almost all their Pyrex for less than $3 a piece.
What obscure recipe book do you have and love?
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B000KRX5HS/ref=dp_olp_used?ie=UTF8&qid=1289318838&sr=8-1&condition=used
Hmmm....at nearly $200 per, you might want to start saving so as to eliminate the sibling rivalry. ;-)
What obscure recipe book do you have and love?
Oh, yeah! I've got a couple of general Farm Journal cookbooks--mainly from the '50's; it amuses me to see all the talk of "feeding the Men Folks". And a recent acquisition, all on PIES!
Need new fridge -- get bottom freezer?
Dissenting voice: after too many years of bending down, already, to peer into my woefully inadequate 16cf fridge, I was happy to get a side-by-side Samsung this year. Since I already have two freezers in my basement pantry area (upright and small chest; we buy whole hogs and sides of beef and in bulk from our co-op), I tend to put only stuff I access regularly in my kitchen freezer. I LOVE being able to have most stuff at or near eye-level (my whole wheat flour, jars of various nuts, bulk yeast, 7-grain flour, etc.) that I pull in and out frequently. There's a bottom basket for the rolly stuff --I'm using it for meat, mostly--and I can stack bags of frozen produce, and boxes of prepared meals, on the other shelves.
And, of course, since the vegetable bins (2) are stacked on top of each other on the fridge side, they're quite rummage-able as well, and the shelf stuff is all at waist level or higher, instead.
It's our first ice-water dispenser in my entire life. We're infatuated. Hope it doesn't break soon. :-(
What obscure recipe book do you have and love?
Yep. I've lived in Iowa for over thirty years, now, but I still consider myself a Southerner when it comes to my tummy!
What five cookbooks would you keep?
Yeah, I'm never going through that again. Freecycle is my friend.
How Large is Your cookbook or recipe collection or magazine collection
Yeah, and my father wrote up a lot of her recipes into his own little cookbook, mentioned in a different thread. http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/745239#6041280
I am lucky. :-)
What obscure recipe book do you have and love?
He died about four years ago; my mother went 15 months before him. You know, I'd never considered that, but I already was kicking around the idea of trying to write "his" memoirs (as he never got around to it, himself). He was news editor of the Arkansas Gazette during the Central High School integration crisis (they won a Pulitzer for that) and later worked with ML King during some civil rights times in Louisville, Ky.
His food stories might fit right in! Thanks for being so nice and encouraging. :-)
What obscure recipe book do you have and love?
Oh, forgot to add: I have one of only five copies in existence of an anecdotal cookbook my father wrote for the family about 15 years ago. Not only does it have most of my mother's famous recipes, it is filled with well-crafted stories (he was a journalist for a major newspaper) about his growing up during the Depression in New England, his WWII experiences in China and India, his culture shock upon falling in love with a rural Texas gal with a giant family, from the Rio Grande Valley, his civil rights work in the 60's, etc. PRECIOUS and full of great recipes.
How Large is Your cookbook or recipe collection or magazine collection
About 300 cookbooks, I guess...and 15 notebooks filled with recipes my mother either laboriously wrote out in her beautiful penmanship, or cut and pasted (rubber cemented, actually) over about 40 years, too. I used to haul around 20 years of Bon Appetite and Gourmet--to my husband's dismay, when we moved--but ditched those in favor of Epicurious.com. Now SERIOUSLY regretting getting rid of the issues of Gourmet; so glad I saved at least the last five years. Several years of Savuer, some of an Italian/American magazine I"m blanking on the name, Food and Wine (don't like much but it always seems to be a freebie), some of Cooks Illustrated, and very precious copies of a magazine dear to this culinary historian's heart, the long gone but not forgotten "Cuisine" magazine.
I love my complete collection of the Time-Life Foods of the World .I used to sit in a corner of the kitchen, reading those while my mother cooked....or we watched Julia Child or Graham Kerr (the Galloping Gourmet) together, after school. Those afternoons together deeply influenced my educational choices later in life. I treasure my old Anna Thomas Vegetarian Epicure books, because they were the first ones I owned as a newly fledged Young Adult (and cooked famously heavy meals from for my later husband, and for my parents, in my first apartment)...I've got just about all the "must have" cookbooks/authors of the past 25 years--including Marcella Hazen, Dianna Kennedy, James Beard, Paula Wolfert, Julia Child, Julie Sahni , Moosewood, Deborah Madison, etc.,etc....books on bread, books on canning and preserves, meat, cheesemaking, Indian, Vietnamese, French, Italian, Portuguese, Greek, Caribbean, Mexican, etc., etc....Southern cooking, CA new wave cuisine, etc., etc. I love cookbooks, and have a small collection of historical ones--my oldest is from 1845--for great bedtime reading, too.
Motel Living. Do I Have to Starve?
I strongly recommend you look for copies of two older Barbara Kafka books--Amazon, probably, has used copies available--called The Microwave Gourmet, and the Microwave Healthstyle (something like that ) Gourmet. She has time tables for every kind of fish you can think of--according to thickness and cut--and my copy of the first book just falls open to her incredible microwave risotto recipe, I've used it so many times. I cook almost NOTHING in my microwave, but when I do--and it has to be good for me to bother--it's invariably one of her recipes.
What obscure recipe book do you have and love?
I usually sneer at "affliated" cookbooks (you know: ones associated with a show, or a magazine, etc.) but probably the MOST used cookbook in my house, day after day, for years (out of over 300) is one published back int the 80s by Southern Living magazine, called Cooking Across the South. Although we've lived in Iowa for three decades, hubby and I are both southern born and bred, and cannot live without a good cook book of our childhood favorites. How can you not love a book that has several PAGES of corn bread recipes (at least 10, I think), for instance?
Cooking boring dried beans
I find canned beans perfectly tasty (but second rate to freshly cooked) BUT I always rinse them before eating/cooking. I don't like the "slime" that they're often packed in...and that will reduce your sodium content, too.
Cooking boring dried beans
White teparies. Loaded with flavor and some of the highest protein content around..they're almost sweet, too:
"
Can a bean be romantic? We think so! Teparies are indigenous to North America and were developed by Native Americans to be drought-tolerant. Higher in protein and fiber than other beans (which are already super foods), what more can you ask for in food? Flavor and texture? You got it! The small beans plump up a bit but keep a meaty, dense texture. Can you tell we're smitten?
The beans are savory but the white version tends to be slightly sweet."
http://www.ranchogordo.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=RG&Product_Code=TEPB02&Category_Code=DHAHB4
Cooking boring dried beans
Oh, to list my "experience": I've ordered probably 10-15 pounds of Rancho Gordo beans every year for three years, so far. Never had a boring bean. (I would not bother to order the pintos again, however...they're not much different from freshly harvested pintos, anywhere. ) They cook in about 2/3rds the amount of time as beans from my local grocery stores, too.
Cooking boring dried beans
Did you try the Good Mother Stallards? The giant Christmas limas? The white teparies? The Eye of the Goat beans? Some of the amazingly interesting, indigenous and rare varieties he's helping to bring back from the brink of extinction? Some of Rancho Gordo's beans are very, very unusual--and with that distinction often comes amazingly different and delicious flavors.
I agree, however: if you're going to buy plain old pintos, or garbanzos, or cannellini's, might as well stick to something local and cheaper (unless they're old; RG's are always very, very fresh).
But, if like us, you want to experience the FULL RANGE of flavor that beans can and do possess, he's the best source around. I don't consider the $4 per bag price exorbitant, given their unique characteristics and extraordinary flavor (the Mother Stallards, for instance, need no seasoning whatsoever but salt, and are so incredibly flavorful the family fights over the last serving) and the fact that there's a flat rate shipping fee of just $8 ( and I stock up!) to anywhere in the country.
November 2010 Cookbooks of the Month: WOLFERT's World of Food and The Cooking of Southwest France
It freezes REALLY well. :-) I made a her cassoulet once--right after the book first came out--and chucked about half of it in the freezer. Forgot it. Hubby found it over a YEAR later, and--given how much work and time went into it, and how delicious it had been--convinced me to eat it. Tasted just fine!
Cast Iron Recipes Please?
If you don't get enough ideas here, these are actually pretty good cookbooks (I say that with some surprise, as "theme" cookbooks often are not):
http://www.amazon.com/Cast-Iron-Skillet-Cookbook-Recipes/dp/1570614253/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1288633683&sr=8-1
and
http://www.amazon.com/Griswold-Wagner-Cast-Iron-Cookbook/dp/1602398038/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1288633710&sr=1-1
I use my skillets for almost all frying, getting a good char on peppers and steaks, frittatas, and lots of baking (cornbread, rollls, pizza, pies). My dutch ovens are for no-knead bread, pork roast like Mama made , chili, and pot roast. Sorry, no specific recipes as some I just wing it based on 34 years of cooking, and a lot can simply be adapted from recipes suggesting non-cast iron pans.
What are the cooking temperatures of your slow cooker?
I have a KitchenAid 7 quart (it works wonderfully, but there are horror stories about the ceramic insert suddenly breaking. I hadn't heard those when I bought it...keeping my fingers crossed!) and it has so many settings (high, low/simmer, buffet, and keep warm) that I can do just about anything. The "high" IS higher than my old Crock Pots, however...I don't use it much except to finish things off, or get them started.
Cast iron lids
Yeah, I've always had the same problems. I love my CI dutch ovens, and I have four different sizes of Griswold skillet lids, too (my Preciouses: #7, 8, 9, and 10--cost more than the pans!) but everything you say is true.
I make sure to spray some PAM type stuff on the interior of the lid prior to use. And I find that most lids will allow their handles to slip down between my oven rack bars, stabilizing them, when I'm seasoning. When they don't, I sometimes invert them over a not great CI skillet, merely as a holder, while seasoning.
Also, after washing, I make sure to pop the lids over the burners for a few minutes--on medium--to make sure they're good and dry before storing.
Can I put my all clad in the oven?
No problem at all. In fact, I'd venture the heat is gentler on it than direct heat sources--such as burners--would be. Watch out, though! Because it's clad all the way up, those puppies get hot all over!
Cooking boring dried beans
Oh, you can start them at bed time, too, if you want some for lunch, instead. Waking to the scent of beans isn't so great (bleah....I'm a Morning Queasy Stomach person) but you get used to it.
Cooking boring dried beans
Crock pots are second-rate for most recipes, I find, but they work wonders with beans. You don't even need to soak them....just start them on "low" early in the day (adding your aromatics--sauteed garlic, onions, carrots, maybe a hot pepper?) with plenty of water. Voila! Perfectly cooked, tender, and not broken or mushy. (don't add salt till the last few hours).
A source for wonderful bean recipes (and wonderful beans!!!) is here: www.ranchogordo.com Check out Steve Sando's blog, especially, for great recipes.
Sticky Cast Iron
You can burn it off entirely in the self-cleaning cycle of an oven, if you're afraid of lye.
Of course, you'll need to re-season after that, but it seems you know, now, that you need to season at a higher temperature. I've seasoned about 50 pieces of cast iron in the past year and a half; none came out "sticky" once I was advised by collectors to ignore those "350 degree" recommendations from some manufacturers' websites. I go with 475 and get great results.
Sticky Cast Iron
Previously, lye was among the many different alkalis leached from hardwood ashes.[1] ...
... Lye is valued for its use in food preparation, soap making, biodiesel production, and household uses, such as oven cleaner and drain opener.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lye
