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Archives Index updated Nov. 22, 2003 Note: Not all posts are indexed. Tips Wine wisdom in one paragraph Frozen cookie dough Magnetic meal planner Storing sugar Cooking salmon Recipes Peppered honey BBQ sauce Grape juice BBQ sauce "Dirty Shoelaces" Fajita sauce Brine for salmon Soy sauce chicken and noodles Chicken Cordon Bleu salad Baked fish in shrimp cream sauce Sweet potato cups Essays Real men don't make summer salad Grilling blasphemy? A craving for sushi Alaska philosophy The great pizza tragedy Viva viva tortillas A philosophical quandary Fresh fish yes, fish no The FoodDork project The tomato question A little explanation Why grown men cook Are you a FoodDork? Contact FoodDork

Monday, May 26, 2003

Food prejudices?
Posted 12:46 PM by Mike

The other night I was in another of my experimental moods. The menu called for flank steak, and I was going to serve it with egg noodles as a side with some kind of sauce. Then I decided, why not mix it all together, cutting the steak into thin strips and then blending it in with the noodles and sauce? The result, I was aware, would be nothing more than a glorified Hamburger Helper-type meal, but that didn't worry me, because the ingredients would be from scratch and not some powder poured out of an envelope. Besides, it was flank steak.

I mentioned it to my wife, and asked if she thought that might taste good. She thought for a moment, then said, "I don't know ... isn't flank steak too fancy and pricey to be doing something like that?"

"What does price have to do with it?" I asked.

"Well, when I was a kid, and my mother served flank steak, that was considered a fancy meal. Flank steak is pricey. As far as my mom was concerned, if you wanted to experiment like that, you didn't use the fancy meat; you used something less costly."

Well, I could see that point if you had an inkling that your experiment might turn out ghastly, and you didn't want to waste pricey food. But if you were fairly confident that whatever you concocted would be, at the very least, edible, then what does it matter how much the meat costs, as long as it tastes good?

It occurred to me that we tend to grow up with certain food prejudices that compel us to use certain foods in certain ways, regardless of whether or not they taste good. Part of the learning process of cooking, as it turns out, is learning how to break through those prejudices and take chances, experiment. As long as the result tastes good, it doesn't matter what tradition it breaks.

As for the flank steak/noodle combo, by the way, I would grade it a C+. The sauce didn't infiltrate the noodles as well as I'd hoped, so there wasn't as much as a beefy taste to them. And the flank steak itself didn't bring as much flavor to the table as I'd hoped. Would, in fact, another cut of meat have served the purpose better? Oh well. It still was edible and the family enjoyed it. Next time I'll give it some extra kick.

Tuesday, May 06, 2003

Grape juice - it works!
Posted 8:18 PM by Rick

A while back I wondered if grape juice could fit well into a recipe for barbecue sauce. It can! Here's my experimental rule of thumb: If a recipe calls for cider vinegar (which neither my wife nor I like) then use the given amount of white vinegar and add half that amount of grape juice. Here's an excellent mop (basting sauce that goes on well with a mop) for pork, slightly modified from a great booklet, "Texas Barbecue" that I picked up at the grocery store counter:

1/4 cup grape juice
1/2 cup white vinegar
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup diced onion
1/2 cup lemon juice
1/2 cup Worcestershire sauce
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 and 1/2 tablespoons paprika
2 teaspoons hot dry mustard
1 and 1/2 teaspoons cayenne pepper
Simply mix all ingredients and simmer in a covered pot for 40 minutes.

Interested in other fruit combinations for BBQ, or just BBQ period? A long-time professional chef, my neighbor, says the must-have book is Paul Kirk's "Championship Barbecue Sauces." 175 recipes and the philosophy behind creating your own recipes! He offers quite a few fruit recipes that include: tangerines, raspberries, purple plums, smoky peach and cranberry-pineapple. Assuming I won't be able to steal my neighbor's copy (where will I run?) I will definitely be buying my own.

From Mike: You have a neighbor who's a professional chef?! Perhaps you can grill him for more cooking tips! (Ha! Get it? "GRILL him"? He's a chef and you're talking about barbecue and ... uh, don't mind me.)

From Rick: In fact, I intend to grill my neighbor a lot when he returns from a six-week vacation. I knew he had been a cook on the North Slope (where the oil workers eat really well: steaks, etc...) and on oil platforms for a long time but I only recently caught on how heavy he is into BBQ. He turned me on to the book mentioned and a great publication from the Kansas City BBQ Association and some marvelous Web sites. I am starting to get excited about doing "real" BBQ, the kind done in competitions. Putting meat on a grill like I do is apparently something experts only do to hamburgers and is called grilling, not BBQing. I pulled down plans for a "Big Baby Double-Barreled Cooker" made from two 55 gallon drums stacked horizontally on top of each other that just might let me enter that world without a huge expenditure of money.

Friday, May 02, 2003

Spain meets the South
Posted 7:17 PM by Rick

My wife fixed a standard recipe of Paella, but with one slight difference: Knowing my distaste for green peas, she substituted black-eyed peas. The result was delicious!! Now, if she had just fixed hush puppies...