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

so who did you used to be? are you old too? i don't know the name. or the late great either. so confusing.

Assume you were addressing me, since you probably know who Alfred is - I have been around since 2005. I was Jesse until last year when I killed off my old Yahoo email account. I was some form of "Jesse" in the sandboxes, too.

whooooooooooooooooooo are you

I'm just Jesse in the 'box.

i also recommend this book:

http://www.amazon.com/How-Peel-Peach-Other-Things/dp/0471221236

One of the best cookbooks I have had is an Australian cookbook/encyclopedia, by Stephanie Alexander called "A Cooks Companion".

It's a big fat book, organized alphabetically, with an entry for common vegetables and meats, fruits and seafood. For each entry there's a section on varieties, storage, preparation, and then a selection of recipes for that ingredient. I still use it to this day, if I come across a veggie at the market that I'm not familiar with, or I try a new cut of meat at a restaurant, I can refer to it and figure out how to go about cooking it or preparing it, it's so useful. Her recipes can be a bit bossy/complicated, but I've had it for like, 15 years and I love it to death. I carted it with me in my carryon luggage when I moved.

I don't know if there's something equivalent to that here, but that seems like it would be less intimidating, and a little more instructional than a regular cookbook. I dunno.

i see that in every kitchen

Yeah it's kind of a mong cliche, but it's pretty great. Taught me a lot.

yeah that's a pretty universal book, although I do not own it.

How to Cook Everything is a popular cookbook that has a bit of that to it. It's not quite as encyclopedic but it's fairly expansive and very good as a beginner's cookbook. One thing I like about it is that he'll give you a simple recipe and then like five variations (basic broiled fish and then broiled fish with various kinds of sauces, e.g.)

Ya I find I consult bittman a lot for basic ideas and simple recipe bases

alinea requires too much specialized equipment, get him the french laundry one instead

my chef instructor was telling the class how thomas keller pushes his soups/sauces through a tamis seventeen times to get the ideal smoothness. that's fairly specialized and very labor-intensive.

I have to admit Ive never used my copy of Cooks Companion for a THING :/

But u kno, its kind of like owning a dictionary or shakespeare, you dont really read it, its there for reference.

This is a thread I mentioned yesterday and the first post is hilariously befuddling.

The super-basic questions thread for non-cooks

is there anything technically wrong with this? any way i could make it better?

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/183/415409461_68654b7a14.jpg?v=0

It could be made better by not doing whatever is going on there, also by getting a stove w/ burners. What's w/ that stove?

Lol

yeah something really weird is going on there

also to cut to the chase: plastic colander over heat = fire hazard so

That initial post and image have been stuck in my head for 5 years now and I'm glad I finally tracked it to ground! Jergins was a little defensive in that thread, but I think things were learned and lives were saved. (literally. he was doing dangerous shit w/ chicken)

Joyriding?

i was kidding, i know that the french laundry is probably the hardest cookbook out there that's not molecular gastronomy or pastry

chicken sounding?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ss8LDBNcsWc

sweet lord, that female co-anchor's reaction face is one of my favorite things in the world

hahahha

that is fantastic

One-pot cooking is my favourite thing.

i was kidding, i know that the french laundry is probably the hardest cookbook out there that's not molecular gastronomy or pastry

yeah, but it's amazing, such a great thing to have and stare at and imagine learning things from.

Anyway, ate a huge meal at a Beefeater last night, which is why I'm awake now. It was satisfactory.

And half price with a free hotel room.

I have Delia Smith's Complete Cookery Course (or similar - 400+ pages, black, she's wearing red on the cover) which is kind of my reference guide. I seldom cook a recipe from it but it gives me lots of basic facts and ideas. I have lots of Nigel Slater, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, and Jamie Oliver books, plus a few by the likes of Madhur Jaffrey, Gordon Ramsay, and so on and so forth. Slater is my favourite. Oliver is like an adolescent version of Slater. I do a lot of recipes from The Guardian, toot here is a huge amount to be said for owning a few good knives and some good pans and learning a few basics (like dicing an onion! The flavour changes depending on size of pieces, oil used, heat applied, etc etc), and then just experimenting.

Keller's Ad-Hoc At Home is a much more down-to-earth book. Also big ups to the Culinary Institute of America's book The Professional Chef.

Ruth Reichl's complete reworking of The Gourmet Cookbook has been a handy resource for me.

labensky's on cooking is really intimidating but also really useful:

http://vig-fp.prenhall.com/bigcovers/013715576X.jpg

between the page count and all the sidebars/tangents, it's kinda the infinite jest of cooking texts.

^ how not to sell a copy to me

Books weren't how I learned my fundamentals.

Keith Floyd on TV is where I got much of mine from!

most of my heroes dont appear on no stamps

But they are on Channel 4 quite often. Or BBC2.

oh god the keep fuckin that chicken clip just sent me into like 10 minutes of conniption fits. that will never not be funny.

my theory was that ernie was just really bored that day. wkiw ernie.

Ha Trayce! I loved Keith Floyd. My secret favorite was Jeff Janz (sp?)

I swear that guy is actually saying "keep pluckin' that chicken" and erryone just wants to wilfully mishear it.

I hada pesto chicken sandwich today, thanks to this thread.

yum

I swear that guy is actually saying "keep pluckin' that chicken" and erryone just wants to wilfully mishear it.

i dunno, trayce. the slow-it-down part of the tube makes it seem pretty clear that he said "fffffffuuucckkiinnn", but maybe they doctored it or something...

'okay whatever' is what this thread is notably fucking lacking.

is there anything technically wrong with this? any way i could make it better?

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/183/415409461_68654b7a14.jpg?v=0

i don't get what's wrong with this? i've done it myself. with broccoli, not beans

probably wdn't do your plastic colander much good, and you might get a bit of leaching of plasticy chemicals? with a metal one it wd be a perfectly acceptable steaming method i think

you need a LID to TRAP THE STEAM. like a large pot lid. hot steam is what cooks the food. otherwise the steam just goes UP. it cooks the food a little bit as it goes up but not very much. with a lid, all the steam stays around the food. it happens very fast. with green beans you maybe need to steam them for like 5 minutes.

the other BIG PROBLEM is that something plastic on the stove = potential for burnt, melted plastic.

you need to use something METAL. if you don't have a metal colander or sieve, or even an ACTUAL STEAMER, you could use aluminum foil with holes punched in it.

oh i don't really know what the colanders i've used were made out of

the last time i tried to steam broccoli the pots all seemed too big for the colanders and none of the lids fit so i had to rest a too-small lid on top of the broccoli and then the colander slipped off and fell into the hot water halfway through and i had no idea what to do. that's when i ended up gnawing on semi-raw florets because i sat there waiting for like half an hour but they didn't get any softer

never again