Marilyn Haggerty's amazing Olive Garden review and the subsequent viral shitstorm

surprised no comments on H F-W's tea recipe, that shit is seriously the most epic thing i think i've ever read.

lex: "lol I'm so helpless!!!"
everyone else: oh don't worry I'm a good cook, let me tell you some stuff
lex: "lol I'm so helpless!!!"
everyone else: oh don't worry I'm a good cook, let me tell you some stuff

i tend to be terrified of not following recipes utterly slavishly and to the letter. i can't comprehend the "but that bit doesn't matter" argument because if the recipe doesn't matter i am even more adrift than before

and yeah it probably is stressing myself out for no reason but this is what happens every time! there's ALWAYS something that pushes my panic button, often something completely unforeseen that's not even part of the recipe. that is why i don't cook.

iatee can you fuck off?

little fucking cunt get the fuck out of my face

tip: put your iphone in a baggie if you want to look stuff up while cooking

I'm pretty sure if someone held a gun to your head and told you to caramelize an onion, you would 'rediscover' google.com

I don't know if I can explain this exactly, but when I quarter an apple or grapefruit, I cut off the inside bit of each resultant triangle to get rid of the core. I suspect this could be done with a quartered parsnip? Again, I am not even sure what a parsnip is.

Good tip, google! Err. google. SHIT. GOOLE! You are being difficult, fingers.

iatee: I am also a lex, for extra lex-on-lex-lols.

tip: put your iphone in a baggie if you want to look stuff up while cooking

then where do you put the weed?

yeah lex that's why i wrote about cooking being like learning a language. at some point, to succeed AT ALL, you have to be OK with making mistakes. when i was first learning french (like for real, not in school) i was paralyzed by getting things wrong, and i'd try to formulate the perfect sentence in my head before i said it, but of course the conversation had already moved on by then.

http://www.dreamstime.com/flat-parsley-thumb15552228.jpg

Flat (or Italian) parsley

this book shows you how to chop vegetables, lex

it even has step-by-step illustrations

i recommend picking up nigel slater's "appetite" as a good starter cookbook, his recipes have like five ingredients and three steps and he explains how to adjust if you can't do what he says

That tea recipe IS epic and confused and frustrated me. I kinda get where Lex is coming from now. Except I am okay with disregarding dude's instructions and waving my culinary freak flag.

DJP: the weed goes in the box in the living room! I bought the box from Rob Schneider.

i have sub-par kitchen skills and don't have an iphone, i just read that on some dickhead food blog at some point :)

happy to help tho

i'd love to have just a solid grasp of basic kitchen techniques instead of poring over a bunch of individual recipes -- seems like 'the system' expects you to go from the specific to the general over n100 years, i'd rather know the general

you should get that book i linked for lex then, it just goes technique-by-technique w/o recipes

btw to do a "perfect dice" on an onion:

1) turn the onion so it's standing straight up on its roots (the little hair-type things that hang from the bottom)

2) using a sharp knife, make parallel cuts in one direction, as wide as you want your dice to be. DO NOT GO ALL THE WAY TO THE BOTTOM OF THE ONION. i.e. do not slice up the onion, just make deep cuts that stop a little before you would chop off a slice

3) do the same thing in the perpendicular direction. when done, your onion should be sliced "in a grid", but still all one piece.

4) now turn the onion on its side and make parallel cuts, straight down and all the way through the onion.

you now have "perfect dice", i.e. pieces that are all the same size

yeah lex that's why i wrote about cooking being like learning a language. at some point, to succeed AT ALL, you have to be OK with making mistakes. when i was first learning french (like for real, not in school) i was paralyzed by getting things wrong, and i'd try to formulate the perfect sentence in my head before i said it, but of course the conversation had already moved on by then.

haha i was competent in french at school (got a at a-level, could just about hold a simple conversation then) but was so much better at reading and writing it than speaking or listening because i'd do the exact same thing. i'm fairly sure i could still read and write after a vocab brush-up, but the other two have rusted away so much. too bad for me they're the ones i'd actually need to communicate in france. i am paralysed by the idea of getting things wrong across basically everything i do! always have been! it's lucky there are things i can actually do.

languages is a good analogy though - look there are people who have such a natural, unbelievable flair for picking up languages, esp speaking. got a few friends like that, also my dad. then there are people like me, i was smart enough that i could understand the grammar and work out bits of vocab from etymological roots to become competent, but it never felt "natural" and it didn't really stick without practice. and then there are people who are absolutely hopeless and can't seem to progress to communicating intelligibly in a different language at all. you either have it or you don't.

also just like language, if you *have to do it*, you will be able to do it. any human can do it.

If dicing an onion is too intimidating, there's also this marvelous device called a food processor.

lex i imagine your biggest barrier to cooking success is 1) it's easier for you to get take-out and 2) you don't really feel the personal need to be a good cook

late great you forgot to tell lex to peel it! and HOW to peel it! (actually i would love to know a trick - any trick - for how to peel an onion without becoming enraged)

1. peel onion
2. don't get enraged

cut it in half, then peel the halves

lex i imagine your biggest barrier to cooking success is 1) it's easier for you to get take-out and 2) you don't really feel the personal need to be a good cook

this is true as well. i dislike it because it's time-consuming, boring, i'm very bad at it and i'm lazy.

throw onion out window. run screaming to nearest cafe.

you know i actually chop up onions *without* peeling them and then just pick the skins out of the pile of chopped onion

then again i almost never do a perfect dice, usually i chop onion into big chunks

i think the easiest way to peel an onion is just to cut off one of the end opposite the root and then just peel it like a banana. never seem to have too much trouble w/ that. i usually take off the outer layer of onion too since it has a different flavor from the rest of the onion.

i dont know why lex is wasting his time insisting on his helplessness here, or why other people are wasting their time attempting to help someone who really doesnt care, but it makes for oddly fascinating reading

you know i actually chop up onions *without* peeling them and then just pick the skins out of the pile of chopped onion

then again i almost never do a perfect dice, usually i chop onion into big chunks

I'm jealous of other people's ability to chop onions; this is exactly what I do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwGBt3V0yvc

here u go... mates

I kind of don't see the point of a perfect dice tbh; I just chop and chop and chop until the largest pieces are small enough for me

I would like to encourage everyone to keep posting potentially Lex-friendly recipes and tips as I am also something of a disaster in the kitchen but I'd like to learn

I looove to read the "what's cooking" thread on I Love Cooking, but sadly I don't learn much from it as the board is for people who Love Cooking, and therefore everyone just says "had some chicken, made a [sauce I have no idea how to make], added [2 other items, at least one of which is hard to buy or I don't know the name of in the UK], it was delicious" and everyone else nods sagely because for them that is enough information to reconstruct the meal - but not me

PS my dinner tonight was an assortment of jar sauce, frozen veg from a bag, then the realisation that I didn't have another clean saucepan for rice so I threw some couscous into the bubbling sauce and 8 minutes later it had set into a glutinous pan-shaped block which slid smoothly out of the pan without the need for a spoon and which nobody here would recognise as food

so yes, I am that bad (also I was too lazy to go to the shop so was just using things in the cupboard)

I'm not Pepin. I do pretty much what DJP does

i just chop and chop until the screaming stops

(the screaming in my head)

the idea of perfect dice is that since everything is the same size, everything cooks at the same pace and has the same texture

but yeah, it's a "technical cooking" thing, like a lot of french-derived cooking techniques, that you don't have to follow carefully unless you're shooting for michelin stars

i am a really good cook and having worked in catering, could probably run a catering business competently. but i'm not going to lie, i have made *so many* shitty dishes that were just inedible, and i still fuck up when i'm doing new recipes.

cooking is not easy, and its based on a lot of stuff - like how the onion looks when you're sauteeing it - that you basically have to learn by practice. i've been cooking regularly since 21 and it took at least ten years before i felt competent in the kitchen (and that was *five years after* i finished working in catering)

Also, lex, just curious; when things are undercooked and burnt in the same dish, could it be the quality of the pans you're using? What kind of cookware do you have?

TBH, stuff like "here's how to perfectly dice an onion" really annoys me. Like, I CAN perfectly dice an onion if I want to, but you know what's easier? Just cutting up the damn onion. And you know who notices that it's not a perfect dice? Nobody.

i dont know why lex is wasting his time insisting on his helplessness here, or why other people are wasting their time attempting to help someone who really doesnt care

it's a tradition! like easter, or avoiding cracks in the sidewalk

everyone please watch this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfN4_52loC4

richard e. grant. arabella weir. all the episodes are good, but i like this one best i think. it's got david tennant.

Also, lex, just curious; when things are undercooked and burnt in the same dish, could it be the quality of the pans you're using? What kind of cookware do you have?

i only own one pot, lol. it's kind of a battered old thing. i use whatever cookware i find in the cupboards that belongs to whatever housemates i've had over the years! i don't know what half the things in the cupboards are or do.

oh i own a slow cooker that my mother got me for xmas once but i don't think i've ever used it

TBH, stuff like "here's how to perfectly dice an onion" really annoys me. Like, I CAN perfectly dice an onion if I want to, but you know what's easier? Just cutting up the damn onion. And you know who notices that it's not a perfect dice? Nobody.

― carl agatha, Thursday, March 15, 2012 4:48 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

that IS the easiest way for me, if you just start hacking at it you end up with a big mess instead of a neat pile of onion

i think the other thing about a perfect dice is like in mirepoix (chopped carrots, onions and celery for soup base/stock) you are chopping it to get maximum surface area

that way, if you're infusing something with its flavor and then throwing it out - like in soup stock, where you simmer the mirepoix for at least an hour and then strain out the now-limp and dead carrots, onions and celery - then you're getting maximum flavor out fastest because of maximum surface area

spacecadet, I'll try to include a little more detail in my "what's cooking" posts on ILC.

This is where I mention my top-level cooking advice, the most important thing I tried to pass on to my daughter: don't learn recipes; learn techniques and learn ingredients.

but "perfect dice" is not called "perfect" because it's the best way to dice! there's only certain recipes that call for perfect dice, usually it's fine to chop it coarsely.

like in a lot of italian recipes, you actually want to chop the onion into onion rings, and then chop the rings into halves or quarters, so the shape and size of the onions matches the shape and size of your pasta

yeah okay captain nerd

don't learn recipes; learn techniques and learn ingredients.

it's also good to think in terms of rough proportions

like a salad dressing is:

one part acid (lemon juice, white vinegar, red vinegar, balsamic vinegar, rice vinegar etc)
three parts oil
salt and pepper

optional:

little bit of spicy (onion, mustard, garlic, whatever)
little bit of sweet (sugar, honey, etc)

and then play with the proportions and specifics until it suits you ... like sometimes you want a little more acid or a little less oil

but it's IMPORTANT to mix everything with the acid *before* you add the oil!

god posh nosh killing me again. i've seen it like 20 times. "this wine is about 20 quid, but don't be put off by the price. sometimes the cheap bottles are the best"

There's a cookbook out there somewhere that focuses entirely on ratios like that. I can't remember what it's called. I could probably google it, but that would be ridiculous.