Text 24035, 162 rader
Skriven 2015-02-15 06:05:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Kommentar till en text av NANCY BACKUS
Ärende: hot food & topics 217
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NB>> I'm with you on that... True, spice MIGHT be used to cover up
NB>> shortcomings but it's also quite nice to enhance the taste of foods,
NB>> as well... ;) Perhaps that's a piece of my preferring Asian (of just
NB>> about any sort) over American cuisine... ;)
ML> Though there's no beating a big old steak on occasion.
NB> On occasion. :) I'll agree there.. :)
Like now! I've just finished a big bowl of pasta agli'
olio e peperoncini, and I'm thinking of tearing into a
big chunk of protein at the earliest opportunity.
ML> it seems) in northern south America, their use never migrated
ML> far north. Roughly, the (artificial) demarcations seem to be the
ML> Panama Canal, the Rio Grande, and the Mason-Dixon, for hot,
ML> semi-hot, and sissy hot respectively, the 20th-century hot for
ML> hot's sake being an anomaly.
NB> Or at least a progression of sorts.. :) Spices used judiciously for
NB> flavor, not for heat, one finds plenty of... I think of the spiced
NB> tongue I learned to make from my father...
There are spices and there is hot. They're compatible but
not identical, and they often coexist nicely, but I could
not imagine hot pepper and spiced (I presume a classic
pickling mix with bay, black pepper, clove, coriander seed,
mustard seed) tongue marrying well at all.
When you say "spicy," you can mean any of a variety of
sensations, but the term has been coopted to refer to "hot
spicy," which it didn't universally use to. It's sort of
like the evolution of the term "bathroom," which doesn't
necessarily have a place to take a bath in.
ML> I refer you to early editions of
ML> Joy of Cooking, which referred to the placentas of ordinary bell
ML> peppers as carrying excruciating heat: I don't have direct
ML> evidence earlier than the 1950s, but I can attest to the Scoville
ML> value at that time to be about 10 or 50, no more, even in the
ML> hottest commercial specimens.
NB> Not exactly hot, really... :)
50 is quite noticeable. I don't imagine most "hot"
restaurant dishes go much above that. At some event
(echo picnic or get-together of other friends I forget
which) I demonstrated that I could reliably detect
less than 1 Scoville, as could some others.
ML> I did have a sport once a few
ML> decades ago that actually had some heat, but I suspect that was
ML> the result of a horticultural mixup.
NB> Probably. :)
ML> I wonder if there might be a market for a hot bell pepper
ML> these days.
NB> Maybe... but then there are lots of varieties of hot peppers readily
NB> available now anyway... that might just confuse the issue unless the
NB> flavor was substantially different from the other hots... :)
The bell flavor is distinctive; greeny, gasoliney, but
more pronounced with those characteristics than most other
peppers. Even the fancy colored ones have this trait,
despite some fruity aromas in especially the orange and
red. Jalapeno sort of comes close (which is why I didn't
favor these in the past, but now that some cultivars have
come out with heat ratings up to 10x what the originals
had, the price (green flavors where you don't necessarily
want them) to performance (spiciness) ratio has improved.
ML> It messes up the rest of the day. Lilli tends to threaten
ML> to hold her breath and turn blue if I don't have breakfast
ML> with her, though, so I generally do; this means that the
ML> noontime brisket or fried chicken or rattlesnake stew
ML> doesn't have the satisfying quality it otherwise might.
NB> The stomach not being empty enough to fully appreciate it... :)
Exactly so.
ML> As the beef was ancient and mistreated, I salted it a bit
ML> extra. Also, for some reason, the cumin hadn't been put back
ML> in the fridge (by whom?) so had all the earthiness intact
ML> but not so much of the cumininess, so the result was hardly
ML> worth eating except that I'm saving up for my next extravaganza,
ML> whenever that might be.
NB> And at least it was edible of sorts...
Oh, edible for sure, and it flavored up a bunch of starch,
but not in a particularly excellent way.
ML> By the way, Jonathan cleaned up the kitchen almost (almost) to
ML> the point where I might be comfortable cooking in it; this is
ML> good. He also wandered in while I was eyeballing the situation
ML> and started talking with morbid excitement about a train crash
ML> that had killed half a dozen people, something I was in no mood
ML> to discuss and told him so. I did compliment him on the state
ML> of the kitchen, though.
NB> Progress... maybe there's hope for the kid yet... :)
I'd like to think so, because then my (mostly psychological)
burden would be less. On the other hand, the situation has
blipped downward - there are now week-plus-old raw meat in the
fridge and two partial trays of corn muffins on the dining
table. Coupled with the prospect of standing around in the
open waiting for a bus (to either the grocery store or the
nearest restaurants, which are both in the same place - a few
miles along the bus route in either direction) that might come
10-20 minutes late or might have left up to 10 early, with no
guarantee of when the next one might arrive, current conditions
in the kitchen limit my cooking to small projects using my
emergency stash, which consists of angel hair pasta, rice,
Vietnamese garlic chips (a decade old! and they still taste
the same), olive oil, some spices including a lot of hot
pepper, salt, pepper, and instant soup. Since the chili ran
out, I've been making rapid chile sin carne - put a pot of
pasta water to boil; warm a mixture of 1 ts to 1 Tb extra hot
chile, 2 Tb garlic chips, and 3 Tb olive oil in the nuke,
adding some chicken powder (1/6 to 1/4 packet depending on
how I shake it) and a dash of water after 30 seconds. Toss
the cooked pasta with the olive oil mixture, add a little more
hot pepper if the dish isn't spicy enough, and eat. Does the
job in wholly utilitarian fashion, and I'll brave the winds
and the unreliable bus and go out tomorrow for one of those
rare steaks.
ML> Sigh. I need someone with no kids and no mortgage or who has
ML> outgrown same (Lilli). Otherwise, you'd do fine.
NB> Hmmm... the mortgage is paid off, the kid can fend for himself...
NB> maybe when I start drawing my SS...? ;) Don't have an inheritance to
NB> draw from, though, or much hope of that even eventually... ;)
We can start domestic - I enjoy the barbecue trips to St.
Louis (got some advice from the echo here), Kansas City
(well known to me), and Texas hill country (I had good
guides the first few times, now I know where to go). One
person gets the hotel, the other the car rental and the
food, that's the way it usually works with Lilli and the
other couple people I've shown around.
ML> AIDS patients, and they built one of those things specially for
ML> him at Sloan-Kettering when they had no idea what the stuff was.
ML> I remember having been forbidden from visiting him during his last
ML> illness, something that I sort of regret over thirty years later.
NB> Yeah... One wonders later if one should just have not worried about it
NB> and/or just visited anyway...
That was what some people said at the time, but the hospital
strongly disrecommended it.
Mushroom essence (Essence de champignons)
categories: sauce, ingredient
yield: 1 batch
1 lb mushrooms, quartered
1 Tb lemon juice
salt
16 oz beef stock (or vegetable stock)
Combine all ingredients and bring to the boil.
Cook 10 min; cover the saucepan hermetically
and let stand till cold; strain through a fine
sieve.
after Charles Ranhofer, The Epicurean
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