What kind of cook are you?

tip jar (4.00 / 9)

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by: zic @ Wed Mar 18, 2009 at 14:55:34 PM UTC

Innovative, natch! (4.00 / 6)

Sic Transit Gloria Locavore!

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by: Asinus Asinum Fricat @ Wed Mar 18, 2009 at 16:03:23 PM UTC

Innovative! (4.00 / 6)

My mom was a pretty adventurous cook so I ate a lot of different styles of food growing up. There are a few things I'm not interested in eating, most organ meats being in that category.

Cooking is one of the most important skill sets that a person can have. And once you learn some basic skills, you can cook just about anything, from any culture.

I went out with a fellow from Ethiopia once. There was a pretty strong community of ethiopian college students in Portland, OR in the late 80's. They would all get together on the weekends and have a potluck. You want to talk about some guys and gals who could cook, those college students could with gold stars! Ya better like hot and spicy though. Talk about good eats! And home made mead. MMMMM  

Regarding locavores as elitists - explain to me how supporting local business is elitist....

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by: Joanne Rigutto @ Wed Mar 18, 2009 at 18:01:08 PM UTC

here's begging you'll share some of the recipes you picked up (4.00 / 4)

along the way.

Including the homemade mead.

Poetry, there.

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by: zic @ Wed Mar 18, 2009 at 18:31:05 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I need to do that (4.00 / 5)

Regarding the mead, I intend to make some mead one of these days, I bought 3 gallons of honey from a local bee keeper last fall. I don't have mead, but I do have a kick ass honeyed wine cordial recipe I'm using it in.

One thing about the ethiopian food I learned is about the pancakes they use kind of like some cultures use tortillas and other cultures use bread. The pancakes are called Injira (sp?). When my friend would make them, he'd just use a tefflon coated pan and spoon some of the batter in. He made the batter up a couple of days ahead and let it ferment like a sour dough. When he'd get low on batter, he'd make up a new batch and add a bit of the old. I don't think he used any yeast, just flour and water, which means he was probably culturing a local yeast strain inadvertently. I tried to make the batter with regular wheat flour and it didn't work. I found out later that Injira are made with Teff flour. I didn't know where to buy Teff flour back then, I didn't even know what Teff was, but I do know now. Bob's Redmill sells Teff and Teff flour. I don't know why it works with Teff and not with wheat, but it does, or perhaps I just don't do those types of pancakes so well. That wouldn't be a first.

One interesting thing my friend made was a paste consisting of ground cyanne pepper, a little bit of garlic powder/granules, and just enough chicken stock to make a thick paste. You deffinately wanted to have a couple of glasses of mead in you before you ate any of that. Talk about a 5 alarm snack! You take a chunk of Injira, roll it up, and use it like a corn chip to scoop up some of the paste.

There is something else I learned from watching Andrew Zimmern's show on the Travel Channel, when he was in Ethiopia, and that's popping sorghum. You roast the grains like you would popcorn and he said it was really good. I found some popping sorghum and I'll be planting that this year. Can't wait to try it!

One other thing I learned from my grandma via my dad was to use ground chicken instead of beef or pork when making a tomato sauce for raviolli or gnocchi. The flavor is much more delicate. She also added just a pinch of cinnamon to her beef or pork spaghetti sauce. Not enough to be able to tell that it was cinnamon, but just a little pinch. It blends the flavors of the other seasonings and herb. How I don't know, but it does.

My problem with recipes is that I rarely write things down. Important things like how much of what I use, very important to give someone a jumping off point.

Regarding locavores as elitists - explain to me how supporting local business is elitist....

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by: Joanne Rigutto @ Wed Mar 18, 2009 at 19:52:36 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Thanks! (4.00 / 3)

I know what you mean about writing recipes down, I didn't either, for many years. Then I started realizing that what I made wasn't like what most people made at home, and I began working at recording things. I'm actually thinking of going the video-camera route.

But the other part of the not-writing-things-down problem is not measuring; the pinches, handfuls, pours, and the odd-utensil used for measuring. There's an art to learning your own tools that goes hand-in-hand with good cooking.

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by: zic @ Wed Mar 18, 2009 at 20:28:51 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I have never... (4.00 / 4)

followed a recipe step-by-step in my life, for what that's worth.  I do take suggestions, however; and sometimes use them as rough guidleines.  I think we all do that, though.  I am very proud of my cooking skills, and consider myself in the range of pretty good to great.  Most would agree. :)

My cooking method basically consists of familiarizing myself with the ingredients, reading about what they can do, and then drawing the best out of them.  With lots of tasting and testing along the way...

My new mission this year is to branch out on mushrooms.  I love mushrooms; but I rarely stray from criminis, shiitake and chanterelle.  That will end this year...

"The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks." - Christopher Hitchens

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by: JayinPortland @ Thu Mar 19, 2009 at 00:57:13 AM UTC

sounds like you're going foraging. (4.00 / 3)

wild mushrooms -- part of the thrill is being only 98% sure you've brought home what you think.

That's my cooking method, too. Plus constant cookbook-reading. I've got hundreds of cookbooks, and I read them all the time. But I rarely actually use one while I'm cooking.

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by: zic @ Thu Mar 19, 2009 at 13:28:55 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

did you hear about the guy who recently (4.00 / 2)

died from eating a poisonous mushroom? I guess he was an experienced mushroom hunter but he had an oops.

"I can understand someone from Iowa promoting corn and soy, but we are not feeding the world, we are feeding animals and soft drink companies." - Jim Goodman

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by: Jill Richardson @ Thu Mar 19, 2009 at 13:34:21 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I have a vivid memory from childhood (4.00 / 3)

of this; taking the neighbors (hippies) to the emergency room after they'd been foraging.

To this day, I don't know if they were foraging for food, for medicine, or for spiritual purposes. Maybe there's no difference. But the experience did limit my own experimentation.

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by: zic @ Thu Mar 19, 2009 at 13:44:55 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I came out a cross between (4.00 / 4)

healthy and innovative, which is about right. I hate following recipes. Well, I don't mind following them but the process of dealing with them annoys me so much that I never bother. Looking for a recipe... shopping for ingredients... trying to read and cook at the same time... too much work.

"I can understand someone from Iowa promoting corn and soy, but we are not feeding the world, we are feeding animals and soft drink companies." - Jim Goodman

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by: Jill Richardson @ Thu Mar 19, 2009 at 02:45:51 AM UTC

LOL (4.00 / 3)

I hear ya! The one thing I think a person really needs to pay attention to when cooking is formulae like what is involved in bread making.

Remember Loiosh in my latest emu story? He was a pretty big boy, a bit over 100 lbs. When I first started making bread, I made dinner rolls that Loiosh couldn't bite through. That's the God's honest truth, he had to knaw on them like a bone. It wasn't until I watched Alton Brown's Good Eats show on bread that I learned that bread dough was made by formula, not recipe. Big difference. I now make pretty decent bread, and while I am getting more comfortable at pushing the envelope, I know that when something fails, what the probable cause was and I can correct it with the next batch.

Other than that, when cooking, I know what seasonings I like, and what core ingredients I like and have access to, and I go from there.....

Regarding locavores as elitists - explain to me how supporting local business is elitist....

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by: Joanne Rigutto @ Thu Mar 19, 2009 at 03:00:48 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

that's so true -- bread is a formula. (4.00 / 3)

But even then, there's a wide range of formulas and potential breads from just the simple ingredients of flour, water, yeast, and salt.

My favorite trick recently has been to soak whole grains in water with a bit of whey in it. Stir them up, making a dough-like consistency, cover, and leave out like beans. At the same time, I also make a slightly runny yeast/flour/water concoction, and leave it out to sour.

The next day, I mix these together, adding the salt and maybe a bit of maple syrup, and proceed as usual, making a relatively slack (wet) dough.

couple of hints: don't use instant yeast here, it looses it's oomph too fast.
Do use a baking stone in the oven heated hot, if you have one, but only if you haven't used any sweetener -- it burns too fast.

Soaking the grains with the whey seems to result in a lighter bread that's easier on the digestion.  

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by: zic @ Thu Mar 19, 2009 at 13:42:17 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Yes, too much work. (4.00 / 3)

and who wants to get food gunk all over the pages of those pretty books? (I really like the cookbooks with beautiful photographs in full color and the pretty illustrations.)

That said, my two favorite cookbooks are Richard Olney's "Simple French Cooking," which is a masterpiece of writing on how to cook intuitively, and Alice Water's "The Art of Eating Well," which is one of the only cookbooks I actually make recipes from following the recipe. Neither has photographs, though both have very helpful illustrations.

My cooking is more European-styled; I've made a point of living within walking distance of a good market all my adult life (since my first experience of having the market too far away to walk to in Boston.) So I typically shop daily, or just for a few days, and cook based on what's fresh and inspiring.

Artichokes for dinner tonight; a rarity to find nice and fresh here in ME. Shipped from far away, not local, but so loved that a treat once every year or two seems okay to me.

I've tried to grow them, but our season is just too short. I'd need a greenhouse to fake them out into thinking they'd gone dormant. Maybe someday.

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by: zic @ Thu Mar 19, 2009 at 13:35:36 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

i'm two kinds (4.00 / 3)

innovative and giving.  hmmm. From October to December, my oven is usually hot with cookies, cakes, muffins, etc.  And I like cooking food that I know people will love.  i love feeding people.

but I've also never met a recipe that I couldn't "improve" with just a little bit of this...and that...and maybe a few of those....  Yeah. :)

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by: chicklet @ Thu Mar 19, 2009 at 15:04:57 PM UTC