Text 24089, 177 rader
Skriven 2015-02-16 14:08:00 av NANCY BACKUS (1:123/140)
     Kommentar till en text av MICHAEL LOO
Ärende: Re: hot food & topics 217
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-=> Quoting Michael Loo to Nancy Backus on 02-15-15  06:05 <=-

 ML>> Though there's no beating a big old steak on occasion.
 NB>> On occasion.  :)  I'll agree there..  :)
 ML> Like now! I've just finished a big bowl of pasta agli'
 ML> olio e peperoncini, and I'm thinking of tearing into a
 ML> big chunk of protein at the earliest opportunity.

Too much starch and veggie, and not enough real protein, eh...?  ;)
 
 NB>> Or at least a progression of sorts..  :)  Spices used judiciously
 NB>> for flavor, not for heat, one finds plenty of... I think of the
 NB>> spiced tongue I learned to make from my father... 
 ML> There are spices and there is hot. They're compatible but
 ML> not identical, and they often coexist nicely, but I could
 ML> not imagine hot pepper and spiced (I presume a classic
 ML> pickling mix with bay, black pepper, clove, coriander seed,
 ML> mustard seed) tongue marrying well at all.

It could be an interesting experiment, I suppose... ;0   You had my
father's recipe tongue at the "offal" picnic....  Bay, peppercorns,
whole allspice, cloves, onion...  The pickling mixture is more what I've
seen with corned beef... 

 ML> When you say "spicy," you can mean any of a variety of
 ML> sensations, but the term has been coopted to refer to "hot
 ML> spicy," which it didn't universally use to. It's sort of
 ML> like the evolution of the term "bathroom," which doesn't
 ML> necessarily have a place to take a bath in.

Yep, I know...  :)  Both cooptions I keep pushing back at... at least
when in a somewhat ornery frame of mind..  (G)  And then, I like both
spicy in the old sense and in the hotspicy sense... so sometimes I just
have to make things more specific... and other times I let it slide...

 ML>> I refer you to early editions of Joy of Cooking, which referred
 ML>> to the placentas of ordinary bell peppers as carrying
 ML>> excruciating heat: I don't have direct evidence earlier than the
 ML>> 1950s, but I can attest to the Scoville value at that time to be
 ML>> about 10 or 50, no more, even in the hottest commercial specimens.
 NB>> Not exactly hot, really...  :)
 ML> 50 is quite noticeable. I don't imagine most "hot"
 ML> restaurant dishes go much above that.

Including Thai..?  and Korean...?  (and similar cuisines noted for
heat...?)   I seem to remember some sort of Scoville scale rating on
the Quaker Steak & Lube menu that put their hot sauce above that,
too....  but then, the hot sauce heat would be diluted by the rest of
the ingredients in the burger, for instance, I guess..  :)

 ML> At some event (echo picnic or get-together of other friends
 ML> I forget which) I demonstrated that I could reliably detect
 ML> less than 1 Scoville, as could some others.
 
Never really tried anything like that, so I dunno how I'd do... :)

 ML>> I did have a sport once a few decades ago that actually had some
 ML>> heat, but I suspect that was 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
 NB>> the flavor was substantially different from the other hots...  :) 
 ML> The bell flavor is distinctive; greeny, gasoliney, but
 ML> more pronounced with those characteristics than most other
 ML> peppers. Even the fancy colored ones have this trait,
 ML> despite some fruity aromas in especially the orange and
 ML> red. Jalapeno sort of comes close (which is why I didn't
 ML> favor these in the past, but now that some cultivars have
 ML> come out with heat ratings up to 10x what the originals
 ML> had, the price (green flavors where you don't necessarily
 ML> want them) to performance (spiciness) ratio has improved.

So perhaps the jalapeno already fills that slot...?  

 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... 
 ML> Oh, edible for sure, and it flavored up a bunch of starch,
 ML> but not in a particularly excellent way.

Better than nothing, but not by much...?
 
 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...  :)
 ML> I'd like to think so, because then my (mostly psychological)
 ML> burden would be less. On the other hand, the situation has
 ML> blipped downward - there are now week-plus-old raw meat in the
 ML> fridge

Well past a usuable, even with spices, use date...?

 ML> and two partial trays of corn muffins on the dining
 ML> table. 

Sigh.....

 ML> Coupled with the prospect of standing around in the
 ML> open waiting for a bus (to either the grocery store or the
 ML> nearest restaurants, which are both in the same place - a few
 ML> miles along the bus route in either direction) that might come
 ML> 10-20 minutes late or might have left up to 10 early, with no
 ML> guarantee of when the next one might arrive, current conditions
 ML> in the kitchen limit my cooking to small projects using my
 ML> emergency stash, which consists of angel hair pasta, rice,
 ML> Vietnamese garlic chips (a decade old! and they still taste
 ML> the same), olive oil, some spices including a lot of hot
 ML> pepper, salt, pepper, and instant soup. 

Enough to quiet the stomach, but not particularly excite the taste
buds... ;0   And you are getting rather nasty weather there, too, I
hear...  

 ML> Since the chili ran
 ML> out, I've been making rapid chile sin carne - put a pot of
 ML> pasta water to boil; warm a mixture of 1 ts to 1 Tb extra hot
 ML> chile, 2 Tb garlic chips, and 3 Tb olive oil in the nuke,
 ML> adding some chicken powder (1/6 to 1/4 packet depending on
 ML> how I shake it) and a dash of water after 30 seconds. Toss
 ML> the cooked pasta with the olive oil mixture, add a little more
 ML> hot pepper if the dish isn't spicy enough, and eat. Does the
 ML> job in wholly utilitarian fashion,

One does as one must...  ;)

 ML> and I'll brave the winds and the unreliable bus and go out
 ML> tomorrow for one of those rare steaks.

Hope that worked out well...  :)   Can't say as I could blame you one
whit... ;)
  
 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
 NB>> to draw from, though, or much hope of that even eventually...  ;)
 ML> We can start domestic - I enjoy the barbecue trips to St.
 ML> Louis (got some advice from the echo here), Kansas City
 ML> (well known to me), and Texas hill country (I had good
 ML> guides the first few times, now I know where to go). One
 ML> person gets the hotel, the other the car rental and the
 ML> food, that's the way it usually works with Lilli and the
 ML> other couple people I've shown around.

Possibilities there...  :)   For now, I suppose I'll have to be
satisfied with my explorations locally... :)
 
 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
 NB>> it and/or just visited anyway... 
 ML> That was what some people said at the time, but the hospital
 ML> strongly disrecommended it.

They didn't want to be held responsible for any plague transmission, or
even the merest possibility thereof... 

ttyl       neb

... Apartment building blew up.  Roomers were flying!

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