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

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.

16 tbs = 1 cup

3 tsp = 1 tbs

it's not that hard

Ratio's are a great way to start but at some point it's going to be more about consistency and texture and smell and feel.

Prefer Marcella Hazan's proverbial Italian proportions:

For a good salad you need four people: a judicious one for the salt, a prodigal one for the olive oil, a stingy one for the vinegar and a patient one to toss it.

that's wonderful

man, this thread moves fast

Why doesn't that fourth guy just watch TV while he's waiting for the salad?

I'm sympathetic to Lex's fear of cooking. I think it definitely has the language analogy, I tend to see it more analogous to drawing/painting. I've lost count of the number of confident, talented coworkers I've seen who retreat into a state of stricken terror when asked to pick up a pencil or a paintbrush. and at the heart of the fear is the judgement: what if it's not right/good? what if what I draw doesn't look the way it's *supposed* to. Same with cooking - what if what I cook doesn't turn out the way it's *supposed* to.

To an outsider, art/cooking are NOT subjective. There's no wiggle. To someone who feels they can't draw/cook, they're attempting algebra when they know in their heart the answer is wrong wrong wrong and no-one will eat what they cook/recognise what they have painted. The effort feels futile because the end result seems stacked against them.

The secret, if there is one, is to partner up with someone who can help take the fear of the end result out of your hands, and/or to find a cookbook that speaks your language. Not all cookbooks are made the same, and a lot of recipe writers should be shot in the face for showing off/being vague/being chatty/annoying. Find a cookbook that has a good glossary, and maybe a list of definitions so you know what the author means when *they* say 'chop' or whatever.

Opening up the door for cooking, if you *want* to open the door is easiest if you start with cooking something you already enjoy eating. Like for Lex, if you like eating soup, the ideal would be to learn a simple soup recipe, that's a combination of a few fresh veggies, and a premade stock. And once you have made it a few times, you might find another soup recipe you're game to try. I cook with recipes all the time, I really only 'freestyle' with a couple of dishes and that was after 20-odd years of cooking.

But Lex doesn't have to cook if he doesn't want to.. That would ruin the fun of all of us finding excuses to visit London and trap him in the kitchen :)

The ratio thing is interesting and so true. My dad was a chef for over 40 years and If I've ever asked him for a recipe he's had to think really hard and basically make stuff up in terms of measurements. I've never ever seen him use measuring spoons or cups. I would be surprised if there are any at my parents' house at all.

His vinaigrette is amazing. It has Dijon in it iirc and a raw egg.

Mum was always about splashes and dashes and bits. It drove me crazy.

He makes these amazing pancakes and I remember asking him for the recipe once and him telling me to put in "some" flour. Gee, thanks!

Yep yep. "How much vinegar should I add, Mum?"... "Oh, you know...a slurp."

u_u

he's right though, even if you follow a pancake recipe to a t the little variables in the temperature and fattiness and air/water ratio of the beaten eggs and milk and melted butter and sugar are going to make your flour measurements approximate, that's not even getting into what kind of flour you're using

it's all about "consistency and texture and smell and feel" as MW put it, you gotta just watch the texture he gets when he does it right and then just add flour a little at a time until it looks like that

my cooking got a lot better when i started taking notes on stuff that turned out well and keeping track of what looked like and how it behaved at different points [/captain nerd]

Jenny -- Jody W. is a big fan of Ratio.

i can also vouch for the cooking partner advice, my cooking got a lot better because of my ex-wife

she was so picky she wouldn't even let me beat the eggs for her scrambled eggs w/o supervision and coaching, but damn if it wasn't like being on the set of martha stewart every night and i quickly learned what tasty salad dressing and good batter and dough looks like (haven't really figured out yet how to beat eggs like she does)

the catering stuff was like that but it was more like being on a cross between top chef and the office

ENBB otm. all the best and most experienced cooks i've known have been approximators, recipe-less creators of things. i'm not that good, except as regards the stuff i've been making all my life.

it's exactly the kind of behaviour that makes novice cooks IA. it's kinda cool now that I can cook and I respect the 'whatever whatever' relaxed approach that each version of the dish is a little bit different, but I remember it being crazymaking as a kid

humus is a ratio recipe, ime:

3 pts chick peas
1 pt tahine
bunch of garlic
some water
maybe some oil or cumin or whatever?

let's all pitch in and get lex a copy of the Alinea cookbook for some no fuss basics

we should say "have become" instead of "have been", everyone cooks off of recipes when they're starting out

xpost to contenderizer

I'm still pretty much a recipe cook.

to veer slightly back onto topic i just read that marilyn hagerty follow-up article and i had NO idea ground rounds still existed!!

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

true, I guess we've gotta go with a real beginner's level one

the best advice is the cooking partner stuff (see also the entirely otm "cooking by yourself sucks" acknowledgements of even cooking evangelists upthread). i've tried cookbooks (back when i tried, before i gave up trying at all in the spirit of cutting my losses), being unable to deal with a recipe that's not turning out like it should or other roadblocks is why we're here in the first place. but i don't have a cooking partner oh well