06.13.10
Posted in Cooking tagged Recipes, sharing at 1:16 am by kyrias
“There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.” - Thornton Wilder
I have to admit, there’s little that peeves me more than people refusing to share recipes. I dare say it may even border on the irrational, but there’s definitely a lot of rage generated when someone decides that they’d rather take something to the grave rather than pass it on. It’s almost acceptable if someone refuses to give out a family recipe that they promised to keep a secret, but even then it’s still more than a bit irritating.
There’s a couple of aspects to it for me:
I’ve heard of certain arts gradually fading towards mediocrity when masters of the art decide that they would rather bring their expertise to the grave rather than pass it on because they want to be known for their superlative work, forever surpassing every other person. Even if not quite descending to mediocrity, I find it almost criminal that something which might have been used as a basis to create something better than ever before was deliberately lost because of someone’s pride.
When it’s a recipe and all you’re getting is street cred and not necessarily any monetary gain out of it, it doubly confuses me. It reminds me of a saying that Caesura’s grandfather used to say: “The machinations and backstabbing is only the more dramatic because the stakes are so low.” I hear of people deliberately leaving out ingredients, substituting ingredients, leaving out small but key steps in the recipe… I have to say I don’t understand that level of passive-aggressive pride-mongering. Bad enough if you’re just going to say you’re not going to give it out, but to mislead someone in that way is just petty and cruel.
Even when there’s monetary gain to be discussed, the pettiness only seems more pronounced when famous restaurants are publishing cookbooks to give the public their information. I can understand if a restaurant refuses to give out a prize-winning recipe that keeps the customers coming, but for the average cook, it just boggles the brain.
I think ultimately I don’t believe in hiding information. I believe that the sharing of something good, perhaps even great, is much better than taking it to one’s grave. I think that the sharing of food is a joyous and communal ritual and to refuse to pass on recipes that are enjoyed embitters and distorts the experience. For me, if I had a family recipe, I would be glad to pass it on because then I would know that part of me and my loved ones would forever live on in the minds of those who remember the recipe as “kyrias’ mother’s red braised pork recipe”. I read cookbooks for fun, and I can’t say how warm and fuzzy it makes me feel when I see recipes listed as “Aunt Maude’s cookies” or “Granmma Lucy’s brown bread”. Even if it was a certain food made for special occasions — I believe that the sharing does not dilute or diminish the symbolism and may in fact lend new layers to it. Traveller mentions that there is a special recipe passed down in the family that the women make for their menfolk when they have come back from deployment or a long trip and which she would not consider giving out. To me, that’s a lovely story and if it were I, I’d be more than happy and proud to share a recipe with such a history.
What kills me is when people actively brag about how much other people have begged for the recipe, how they’re taking it to their grave rather than share it, even with their own children.
To me, that says something about you. Nothing complimentary to be sure. It smacks of a sort of pettiness, a passive-aggressive way of wielding power, and failed kindergarten lessons. As my brother loves to say: “Sharing is caring, friend!”
Permalink
02.19.10
Posted in Cooking, Homestay students, Recipes tagged cookies, Mexican wedding cookies, polvorones, Russian tea cakes at 5:20 pm by kyrias
We went out to Minado’s on Valentine’s day and I fell in love with a nutty, buttery cookie that they had simply listed as “butter cookies w/ walnuts”.
By the way, going to Minado’s on Valentine’s day, which was also Chinese New Year’s — was a terrible, terrible idea. The number of people there was staggering. We waited 30 minutes in line to get our food even though we arrived at 5:15, a mere 15 minutes after they opened. When we left at 7:30PM, the number of people crowding the entrance was boggling. Poor hapless, witless fools.
Caesura thought that they tasted like some sort of Mexican cookie and so I went home and looked up “Mexican buttery cookies” on Google. It turns out that they’re called Mexican wedding cookies, or Russian tea cakes, or polvorones. Since I can’t choose between Russia and Mexico, I’m going with the polvorone option.
Although I bought the walnuts this Monday, I finally got around to making them yesterday night. I’d been feeling overstressed and in no mood to test a new recipe, much less a fiddly baking one. It was a good thing too, since what happened afterwards prompted me to make a breakfast of these.
See, we’d been thinking that out of the two homestay students, S was the better one. He’s mostly quiet, didn’t seem to be quite as oblivious as N, and didn’t get up to nearly as many escapades. Note the past tense used for the latter descriptions.
Yesterday night, he told me at about 5pm that he would be going out to eat. This was slightly irritating, because I had already started cooking and if I need to cut back on portions, I really would prefer more advance warning. However, I realized that it was probably a last minute invite from friends and so I brushed it off as a minor issue. I asked him when he would be back and he said around 9 pm.
Later that night…
I’m puttering in the kitchen, it’s about 10:30pm and I’m wondering where S is when I hear the sound of footsteps at the door. Kevin and I turn, only to see two other boys walk in.
Boy1: “Hi. What are you doing?”
Me, somewhat bemusedly: “Making cookies.”
S: “We’re going to watch a movie at midnight.”
Me, blinking more than a bit: “Oh, you have fun with that.”
They leave and my brother rounds on me. He’s livid that S brought two random people home at 10:30pm, and worse, was intending on going to a midnight movie. He thinks that I should have said something. I said that I was hardly going to toss them out on their ear and that I would speak to S separately.
My problem was that, for me, I’m not comfortable disciplining the K-kids. Further, I don’t know as of yet where the line is of how much I can discipline or humiliate them in front of other people and I wasn’t going to just throw cold water on their plans and kick his friends out.
Frankly, I was not processing all of this too well. I vaguely thought that it wasn’t the best idea, but I’ve been living with people who are of-age for far too long and it never even occured to me that I probably should have said something regarding the late hour, the movie idea, and the two people showing up until my brother pointed it out.
Kevin storms off.
He comes back, apparently after having a little chat with S, with more mind-boggling details. Not only did S bring back two people without saying anything beforehand, he intended to have them sleep over.
At this point, I’m speechless. And here we thought he was the easy one to deal with.
This morning, after staying up until 3:30am making sure that he got home safely, I made a breakfast of about half a batch of these polvorones. The only saving grace is that I used less sugar than the recipe called for, and white whole wheat flour. With a little bit of imagination I could almost convince myself that they weren’t that bad for me.
Polvorones
- adapted from Deb at smittenkitchen
- 1¼ cup toasted walnuts
- 1 cup butter
- 2 cups white whole wheat flour
- ½ cup packed brown sugar
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 egg (optional)
I used the food processor to turn the toasted walnuts into a powder. Putting the brown sugar in with the walnuts seemed to help keep it from turning into a paste.
Being the genius I am, I added the butter immediately after pulverizing the fresh-out-of-the-oven walnuts and brown sugar. I was very surprised when with the first pulse, the butter immediately liquidized and spurted upwards. Good thing I had my hand over the feed tube or my night would have gone quite a bit worse.
Somewhat alarmed at the liquid state of the ingredients, I dumped in the flour. Happily, the dough came together and it didn’t seem that much worse for wear.
I stuck the bowl outside in the snow and started on my second batch. 30 minutes later, I brought it back inside and started making balls of the dough.
Not sure if it was the liquidized butter, but the dough was extremely crumbly. I ended up just scooping teaspoons of it and dropping them onto the cookie sheets. The second batch I added an egg, which seemed to help matters and the two didn’t have that much texture difference, so I think I might just throw in an egg the next time too.
I baked them at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes.
Since I don’t like things that are too sweet, I cut back on the sugar in the cookies and utterly ignored the usual convention of rolling them in more sugar.
These were buttery, nutty, and I thought the brown sugar gave it a lovely depth of flavor without being too sweet. However, these are definitely cookies — a couple of them will satisfy cravings for a sweet without sending you on a sugar high. These weren’t dry either, which actually was my problem with the ones at Minado. You can have a couple of these without feeling like someone just stuffed a silica packet in your mouth.
I even think these would be lovely with perhaps a pinch of cardamom, cinnamon, or even rosemary and lavender. I’ll have to experiment a bit more and see what comes of it.
Permalink
01.06.10
Posted in Cooking at 9:09 pm by kyrias
I have to admit, I am one of those people who get flustered when potential guests mention certain food taboos — especially as it seems that everyone has at least one thing they can’t or won’t eat. Vegetarians are actually now the easy ones — when we get into the realm of gluten-free, vegan, or nut allergies, I almost want to crawl under my covers and hide.
No more of that.
I’ve decided that I should expand my cooking horizons. After all, the way things are going, chances that I’ll have to cook for people who have fatal allergies of some sort or the other are pretty high. Even without cooking under the sword of “will I kill my guests tonight…”, I never like to refuse food to anyone and striking someone off the hosting list simply because I haven’t figured out good options just smacks too much of quitting.
I probably won’t ever move into the realm of buying multiple flours or stocking xanthan gum on the baking shelf. Unlikely that I’m going to make vegan patties to freeze just in case someone drops by, or have seitan and TVP just lying around the kitchen — but I’m sure that I can find things to make with items that we already buy on a regular basis that we and our guests can all eat, without fearing that someone might need to whip out an Epi-pen or need a trip to the ER.
Since I’m on a mission to eat less meat, I figure that testing vegan and vegetarian options can only help with that. As for the gluten-free and so on, well, it’s just another adventure.
Conquered the bread baking, the grill, and the wok? Rally forth to storm the towers of gluten and all that, eh?
Permalink
12.29.09
Posted in Recipes tagged Swedish meatballs at 11:55 pm by kyrias
Sometimes I don’t know if I’m just doing it wrong, or if I can never achieve certain levels of tasty simply because I don’t use MSG or hydrolyzed soy protein or certain unknown “natural flavorings”.
Take the Beef Stragonoff, which failed spectacularly. It came out a really unappetizing grayish beige colour which Nora assured me was how Russian food should look and just tasted a lot different from what our school cafeteria used to give us. I might go back and tinker with it because Caesura really liked it, Mr. P was slightly more enthusiastic than indifferent, and I think Zack was ok with it.
Then take the Swedish meatballs of today. First off, they came out tasting different from what everyone expected Swedish meatballs to taste like, even though I compared multiple recipes from multiple blogs, one of which is written by someone living in Sweden.
Yes. I read at least 20 different recipes. I don’t even know who to credit for my end product. Perhaps all of them.
This is one of the cases where I don’t know if I did it wrong, or if the manufactorers of the frozen meals we eat just added random chemicals to our food to make it taste better.
Then there was the sauce. It was a simple sauce made with broth, drippings, flour, some salt and pepper — and was dreadfully bland. Thinking back on it, I also failed at making gravy the last time too — which was a similar undertaking involving roux, drippings, and such.
Blafgh.
To be fair though, I didn’t particularly adore the sauce that came with the Swedish meatballs the last few times I’ve had it, so perhaps I should just write it off as a lost cause. The Swedish meatballs themselves were passable, except perhaps a bit too mushy with too much breadcrumbs. I was ok with the consistency, but the more carnivorous amongst us might want to cut down on them. I might decide to try and make a different sauce for the meatballs the next time I feel like having half my housemates dump their dinner into the trashcan. Say, a nice Alfredo sauce? Or perhaps some ridiculous concoction involving canned cream of mushroom soup, brown gravy, and sour cream? Wait, that last bit would involve those “natural flavorings” and probably more than a bit of MSG. Damn!
Mr. P thinks that adding salt and pepper would fix things. I think that probably it would have, but I didn’t want it to just be one-dimensionally salty either, which it seemed it would have been if I had just added salt to it until it tasted like something. Ugh. Maybe red wine would help. Or nutmeg. Or soy sauce. Or Worchestershire sauce. Or something.
Anyways, for those of you that might or might not want a recipe for some fairly tasty Swedish meatballs sans decent sauce…
Swedish Meatballs
(feeds 3-5 depending on food stretching skill and hunger)
- 1 cup breadcrumbs (can decrease as desired)
- ½ pound ground pork
- 1 pound ground beef
- 2 anchovy filets
- 1 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 egg
- 1 large onion, grated
- ½ cup milk
- ¼ tsp each of nutmeg, cinnamon, cardamom, allspice, and cloves
- ½ tsp each salt, black pepper, and white pepper
Mash the anchovies into the breadcrumbs. Mix the spices into the breadcrumbs. Beat the egg and soy sauce into the breadcrumbs and then add the milk. Let the mixture sit for five minutes so the breadcrumbs absorb the liquid fully. If decreasing the breadcrumbs to half the cup, halve the milk as well. Add the meats and blend well. Some people would tell you that excessive blending will make the meatballs tough — but with the amount of wet breadcrumbs I had, I don’t think that would happen.
Roll the mixture into small balls. I found that small balls about the size of a ping-pong ball worked well. Put on a baking sheet in an oven pre-heated to 450 degrees for 15-20 minutes.
As an aside, I think our oven does run hot since the smoke alarm was going off well before the 10 minutes mark.
Eat plain if you’re feeling particularly carnivorous or make some sort of sauce that works for you and eat over egg noodles.
This will make enough to feed 3-4 people. Maybe five if they’re not that hungry and you make more sauce and make the meatballs smaller to give an illusion of bounty.
—- later on —
For the record, Worchestershire sauce and soy sauce fixed the sauce sufficiently. Zack has proclaimed that he can make a meal of it. We shall see. I still don’t know if I can make a meal out of it.
The question of why I make things that I will not eat probably needs to be addressed at some point…
Permalink
12.24.09
Posted in Cooking, Recipes tagged egg tarts at 11:39 pm by kyrias
Egg towers, if you want the literal translation from Chinese.
I’ve been craving these for a while, but there’s a couple of reasons why I haven’t made them in a long time. I’ll type out the recipe first, which should explain one of the reasons why:
Dan Ta (makes 12)
Pastry:
- 4 oz cream cheese
- 4 oz butter (1 stick)
- 1 cup flour
Filling:
- ½ - 1 cup sugar
- 1 cup milk
- 4 eggs
- 1 tbsp vanilla extract (optional)
Melt the butter and cream cheese, then mix in the flour until you get a supple dough. If you feel it’s a tad on the greasy side, add flour as needed. Allow the dough to rest for 20 minutes, covered, then press balls of the dough into the cups of a muffin tin.
Mix the vanilla extract, eggs, sugar, and milk together. Pour the mixture into the mold.
Bake in a pre-heated oven at 375 degrees for 15-20 minutes.
If you look at the recipe, you’ll see that it’s pretty much nothing but fat, fat, and more fat. Considering that Azora and I can each eat 6 without even thinking about it — it’s pretty much a bad idea to have these lying around.
Secondly, I do not particularly enjoy the part of the recipe where you press the dough into the molds. It’s tedious, time consuming, and you have to be careful not to have thin spots.
Lastly — I often fail at making these, depending on the whims of the stove. Tonight I made two batches and met with abysmal failure both times. The first batch over-puffed and the custard portion looked holey. I thought it was because I left it in for 20 minutes, so the second batch I tried leaving it in for only 15 minutes and allowing it to cook with the residual heat. The custard portion still looked over-cooked and this time the custards seemed to give off water and became soggy.
I have no idea what happened and how to fix it, which is pretty aggravating. I would have made a third batch to test it further, but Caesura pointed out that we were going to have problems consuming the two bad batches already without further adding to the problem.
I looked up more recipes online and it appears that they have a couple of differences. Namely that their recipes have a higher egg to milk ratio, bake at higher temperatures for longer periods of time, and use evaporated milk instead of plain milk.
I think for next time, I’m going to bake at a lower temperature and keep an eye on them so that I can pull them out when they first begin to puff. If my muffin tin would fit in a baking pan, I’d try the water bath method used for making baked custards, but since I don’t have a pan that big, I suppose not. I have succeeded at this before, so I know it can be done, but I have no idea what I did differently. For all I know it’s because my mother’s oven heats differently from the oven at 136 Perkins or our oven runs hot, or something like that. Perhaps a oven thermometer is a good investment?
I know Azora likes these just as much, if not more than I do. So perhaps she’ll carry on the experimenting? I’m feeling a bit tarted-out at the moment and slightly boggled at the idea of eating 24 of these all by myself. Which essentially is 2 sticks of butter, a block of cream cheese, 8 eggs, and nearly two cups of sugar.
Note to the wise: White whole wheat flour doesn’t work well with these. Neither does replacing brown sugar for the white. These things are pretty much heart attacks waiting to happen and there’s no way to even make them seem healthier.
Permalink
11.03.09
Posted in Cooking, Money tagged penny wise, pound foolish at 12:34 am by kyrias
I recently discovered a love for cream of wheat.
Really quick to cook, a whole grain, and something that can be gulped down in minutes… what’s not to love?
My only real problem is that it is kind of pricey. At $3.79 a box — I both wanted to find cheaper alternatives and wanted to know if I could make it at home.
The short answer is yes.
What really amused and frustrated me was the number of bloggers who were boasting of “Cream of wheat for just pennies!”
Yes. Assuming I can buy a pound of wheat berries at my food co-op for, say,$ 2.99.
My box of whole grain Cream of Wheat was $3.79 for 18 ounces — so to be entirely unscientific here and just assuming it’s a pound for easy math, that means I’d be saving $0.8 per pound.
Very nice. Not amazing, but pretty nice savings after a while, yes?
Except a Nutrimill costs upwards of $260 new. I’d have to eat 325 pounds of Cream of Wheat (CoW) before I’d make back my initial investment.
Being generous with my calculations and saying that we go through a pound of CoW in a week — I’d have to wait 6 years or so before I recoup my money.
…wonder if Caesura would be up for that idea.
Not that I’m deriving enjoyment from being snarky, really, but I think that it’s hardly fair to advertise something as a way to be frugal when the way to be frugal involves a rather pricey machine that the average household probably would not have.
Permalink
10.30.09
Posted in Recipes tagged banana bread, Joy of Cooking at 12:35 am by kyrias
Passable — as opposed to the Bestest Banana Bread recipes that you can find by randomly Googling. You know the ones.
I started out with the Joy of Cooking recipe, but I thought that version was a bit dry and so I upped the amount of bananas and made it a full 6 tablespoons of butter. I tried it once with nuts and thought that detracted from the pure banana bread experience and so I’m not doing it again. I might try banana bread with additives in the future, but this really is just how I like it — with no apologies for sheer banana taste and no distractions.
Banana Bread
as adapted from the Joy of Cooking
- 1⅓ cups whole white wheat flour
- ¾ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon baking powder
- 6 tablespoons melted butter
- ½ cup succanat
- 2 large eggs, beaten
- 1½ cups mashed banana (about 3)
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Sift the dry ingredients together. Add the melted butter, then the eggs, then the bananas. Blend it just enough to incorporate the banana and so there are no clumps of dry ingredients. Dump into a buttered standard sized loaf pan and bake for 50-60 minutes — or until a knife comes out clean. This pretty much can be a two bowl process, which I really like, and it’s a lot of bang for the time bucks.
Permalink
10.20.09
Posted in Cooking, Recipes tagged scones at 2:07 pm by kyrias
I made these for a potluck the other day and they were very good — but then how is anything with bacon and cheddar ever nasty?
No. I take that back. Don’t tell me just how someone can screw up that combo. Especially if it involves moldy bread.
They are very rich, and Caesura doesn’t like them that much as a result. I just eat a small 1×1 square and call it good.
Bacon Cheddar and Chive Scones
as adapted from the King Arthur Flour blog
- 2 cups white whole wheat flour
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 tsp black pepper
- 1 tbsp baking powder
- 4 tbsp cold butter
- 1 cup cheddar cheese in small dice
- 1 cup minced chives
- ½ pound maple bacon
- 1 cup buttermilk
Preheat oven to 425°F.
Cut up the bacon, spread it on a baking sheet and throw that in the oven. I used the same baking sheet I was going to bake my scone on so I could skip the greasing bit. Whilst the bacon is cooking, about five minutes or so, whisk the dry ingredients together. Blend the butter into the flour, either with knives or a pastry blender. I used butter from the freezer because I didn’t want the butter melting or getting overly soft in the hot kitchen. Remove pan from oven and drain the bacon. Leave the pan to cool. I kept the grease for cooking, but I’m not quite sure what I’ll do with bacon grease that tastes faintly of maple syrup. Mix in the cheese, chives, and bacon. I added much more chives than the original recipe called for, partially because I love chives, and partially because I was trying to salvage what was otherwise a heart attach on a plate. The additional chives don’t add that much moisture and they don’t really overwhelm the scones in my opinion. Keeping in mind that I come from a culture where we stir-fry chives and eat that as a vegetable course. 
I paused here to allow my baking pan to cool off because I didn’t exactly want the dough sizzling on the hot pan. Note: stoneware cooking pans retain heat really, really well.
Drizzle the buttermilk onto the flour mixture and mix just until it forms a dough. Pat into shape on the baking pan, cut into pieces if you desire, and pop it into the oven. I skipped the egg/cream wash because I didn’t want to bother and it still turned out great. Bake for 25 minutes or until the top is nicely browned.
This was a pretty light and fluffy scone, even with the white whole wheat flour. I might try it with normal whole wheat — but since that doesn’t really have a nutritional edge on the white, I might not bother. I’m thinking about cutting down on the cheddar to see if that will make acceptable for Caesura as a breakfast food.
I’d love to add more pepper to give it a bit of a kick, or use peppery bacon next time. Perhaps adding pepper jack as opposed to cheddar? The possibilities are endless. I’m also thinking caramelized onions, gruyere, and perhaps ham or bacon.
Permalink
10.06.09
Posted in Cooking, Recipes tagged brownies at 10:40 pm by kyrias
Nevko called suddenly last Saturday, inviting us over to his sister’s house. Well, perhaps not so suddenly, but as we had already given up hope that he would call at that point, we were in no way prepared. Leena said that she’d pick us up from Alewife station in about 1.5 hours and she’d be supplying supper.
Absolutely thrown into a panic by the short notice, I rushed to find something that I could bring as a houseguest-gift. I pulled out the box of Duncan Hines, thought about it, and tossed it back into the cupboard. If Leena was going to be cooking for us, I felt bad bringing cake from a mix. Besides, Mr. P doesn’t usually eat cake.
Then I remembered that Leena made brownies the last time we visited…
I ran a quick Google for brownies and came up with this post for the Silver Palate brownies. Since I never think that the usual recipe is chocolatey enough, I did some modifications.
Brownies in a hurry
–adapted from the Silver Palate brownies recipe
- 2 sticks of butter
- 8 oz chocolate (I used one bar 100% cocoa from Ghiradelli and a semisweet bar from the same)
- 4 eggs
- 1 and 1/4 cups succanat
- 1/2 cup flour
- 1 tbsp vanilla extract
- 2 tbsp espresso powder
First I preheated the oven to 350 degrees, then I melted the butter over a low flame in a small saucepot. Once the butter was melted and bubbling, I broke up the chocolate bars and just tossed them in, turning the flame to the absolute lowest it would go.
I’ve never really seen the point of using a double boiler or the microwave since I’ve never had this burn on me. If you’re not pressed for time, the chocolate will melt just fine even without additional heat once the butter is bubbly.
Whisk the succanat and eggs and then mix in the espresso powder and vanilla extract. After stirring the chocolate to make sure it wasn’t that hot anymore, I then poured it into the egg mixture, folded in the flour, and tossed it into the oven for 25 minutes.
The original recipe called for greasing and flouring the pan, but since I really didn’t have the time and I was feeling lazy anyways — I didn’t. I used this pan, Chantal Pure 2-Quart Square Baking Pan, Clear Light Vanilla
that I got from King Arthur, and it was fine. The brownies didn’t really stick and it was a cinch to clean up afterwards. Some steel wool and it came right off.
Disclaimer: If you click on that link and buy the pan from Amazon, I get a commission fee. If you want to buy from King Arthur, they still have it for sale also.
Speaking of the pan — I really, really like it. I bought it because Azora made lemon bars in our old 9×13 pan and because lemon bars don’t really come out of the pan unless there’s judicious use of parchment paper, it kind of got scratched up a bit when we were serving the lemon bars. This one is stoneware, so there’s no fear of damaging the non-stick finish or anything. I’ll want to get another one, this time probably from Amazon, unless King Arthur (KAF) is offering free shipping. I love KAF and really want to support them — but that shipping cost is a killer.
Back to the brownies. It was very good — it was just the right texture, not too cake-like, not too fudge-like and not that crumbley. It was very chocolatey without being overwhelming, in my opinion. Mr. P said that it needed milk but Anila’s friend Lex said he usually uses 16 ounces of chocolate for half the size of the pan I used — I might have to try that some time. Caesura wasn’t in favor of it though, so I might just have to do it sometime and scarf the entire pan myself. The horror and pain, right? 
I think I’ll keep this recipe, but I kind of want to make brownies with less egg and butter in them. A poster on the original site said something very disparaging about the amount of eggs and butter and whereas I feel that one should be able to indulge once in a while, there’s no harm in trying to make it a bit healthier if it doesn’t affect the taste/texture that much. Perhaps keep 2 eggs and use flaxseed in place of the other two? We shall see.
Permalink
08.23.09
Posted in Cooking at 2:22 am by kyrias
I read this piece which discussed packing tools for cooking on vacation and giggled over what other people chose to bring along with them.
Personally, after cooking in three kitchens not my own this past summer, I’ve come to appreciate my own tools that much more.
Considering that it is vacation and part of that is a certain devil-may-care attitude and foraging to see what’s good to eat in the place we’re vacationing, I don’t think I’d go so far as to pack my own spices and soy sauce.
On the other hand, it’s really only asking for frustration to have to try to cut things up with a dull knife. Or cook without a decent pot.
So, I think my list of things I’d take along with me on a trip where I know I’d have to cook is:
- A good, freshly sharpened chef’s knife.
I cannot even begin to describe how much more frustration I have when I try to cut up things with a dull knife now — especially root vegetables. No, let’s not even go into the realm of dicing onions with a butter knife.
- A large plastic cutting board.
All I can say is: You’d be surprised at how many places don’t stock this in the kitchen.
- A wok with cooking spatula.
Yes, I know I’m aiming for lightweight — but again, you’d be surprised at the many kitchenettes that don’t even have a pot with a lid.
- Vegetable peeler
I don’t eat unpeeled root veggies unless they’re organic.
And I think that’s it for now. Perhaps a teapot if I feel like it and it’s chilly out.
I love the comments about how recession-unfriendly this post was. The question could have applied to anyone who travels extensively for business, who is thinking about cooking in someone else’s house whilst visiting, or any number of scenarios where the person in question isn’t living the life of luxury up in the Hamptons.
Sheesh.
Permalink
« Previous entries