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

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.

WmC, thanks, that is appreciated! But don't feel you have to change ILC for me, instead of keeping it how the regulars like it.

I really just like to spy and pretend it's improving my understanding. And there have been complete recipes on there, including a few I've saved to a text file and gone "I am so going to make this later this week" and then never made, months later. I should get on that before making anyone change anything...

ruhlman - ratio

xpost there are a many, many cookbooks in that style now. i have one called "improvisational cook", the idea being that whatever you have knocking around you can use in one of those recipes

what i like about authors like nigel slater (and everyone who followed him like jamie oliver and nigella lawson and a lot a lot of other people) is that they write their cookbooks in that style, making it much easier to learn to cook (by removing the fear of messing up the details)

i like that they're named things like "nigel"

i thought "ratio" was just about baking - or is that just the cover art?

Posh Nosh! Oh dear, I'd forgotten that.

i havent read it but:

In Ratio, Michael Ruhlman, recognized as one of the great translators of the chef’s craft for both home cooks and culinary professionals, shows how cooking with ratios will unchain you from recipes and set you free. Ratio is the truth of cooking: basic preparations that teach us how the fundamental ingredients of the kitchen—water, flour, butter and oils, milk and cream, and eggs—work. Detailing thirty-three essential ratios and suggesting enticing variations, Ruhlman empowers every cook to make countless doughs, batters, stocks, sauces, meats, and custards without ever again having to locate a recipe.

the late great, I use way more mustard than that in my salad dressings - but then I'm a mustard junkie

That's got to be the one. I am intrigued. I already make up half the shit I do in the kitchen as it is (results vary from sublime to lex-esque) so that seems like it would lend itself to my cooking style.

But yeah, you want some kind of ration where the acid mxies in with the non-acid and emulsifies relatively stably

haha i didn't even specify what "a little" was!

i usually use 1-3 teaspoons of mustard per tbs of acid, depending on what kind of leaves i'm using and the mood i'm in

http://www.seriouseats.com/2010/04/salad-dressings-vinaigrettes-the-food-lab.html

That ratio approach could work well with metric measurements - but for Americans you'd constantly be trying to remember how many tablespoons are in a cup and so forth.