General Kitchen Discussion with Introductions

[WadePatton]

We might know what you ride and where and with whom and how fast BUT do we know anything 'bout your food histories? Some have pro backgrounds, some have schooling.

Speak of all that here.


I grew up in the South. Can pan fry anything. Can make biscuits or cornbread in my sleep. Outdoor and Game cookery and BBQ are my other areas of experience. I'm also familiar some elements of Cajun and Southwestern styles.

SO, the quest for butter/milk left me with butter, buttermilk, and the rest of the gallon of raw sweet milk. THEN i learns to make ricotta from the while milk. LEFTover is the whey. Learn to make Bread with the whey.

UPON which fresh homemade butter is very very nice.

Again, all firsts. I wasn't really after butter, but the buttermilk (which i haven't even used yet-use it in quickbreads). Never really thought about making cheese at home until Gordon Ramsey showed a kitchen staff how to. Always avoided yeast bread making, as I'd not been around it much and also because I tend to love bread and eat too much of it.

BUT i'm so tired of reading those long ingredient labels every time i pick up a different supermarket loaf. Now it's just five things. HOWEVER will i do without mono/digliceryide hydroixilacated moxidoniums ?!

Each culinary "hurdle" i clear becomes a freedom-a path to simpler, better foods.

Loving the exposure to all these areas-especially basics that i should have already known. Keep it on!

Next to get some good wheat

[bocarider]

My wife and I became foodies, partly because of our getting into cycling.

I grew up the Northeast. My Mom was a lousy cook (she tried, but I have never liked her cooking and we still tease each other about it to this day). My Dad loved to eat, so there were a lot of restaurant meals in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, but it was pretty much meat and potatoes.

When my wife and I first got married and moved to Florida (law school), we used to lie in bed on Saturday mornings and watch whatever was on TV. The Frugal Gourmet was on, and we just ended up watching him a lot. We got it in our heads that we could cook some of his stuff. I ended up cooking a lot of meals for my law school buddies that were pretty simple, but they were an appreciative audience.

We started to subscribe to food magazines and buying cookbooks and improved our repertoire during the years our kids were born and growing up.

What really got us going on both cycling and being “foodies” was an article in Bon Appetite Magazine about a company that did bike trips through California Wine Country. We figures that would be fun and signed up for our first Backroads trip. It was a revelatory experience for us: it introduced us to cycling, we had the chance to experience amazing, locally sourced foods in Napa and Sonoma and some amazing restaurants in San Francisco. We came home from that trip, bought a couple of Jamis road bikes and a set of really good Global chef knives and embarked on what has been a great adventure for us as a couple of cycling and really intense cooking. From there we went to Tuscany, Provence, Brittany Normandy, the Canadian Rockies, Utah, Bordeaux/Dordogne, the Rioja and the French Alps on our bikes and ate some amazing food which we have had a lot of fun re-creating at home. The Jamis bikes have been traded up for a number of different rides, ending up with some Serottas and we spend our empty nester-hood working, riding, cooking and planning our next bike/food trip. Our recent trip to the French Alps was some of the most interesting food we have had yet in our travels. The riding didn’t suck either.

An added twist for us is that my wife has been gluten free for about 3 years and last year I succumbed to the gluten free thing as well to try and deal with my acid reflux. Sadly, it has been very effective, and while my suffering has been almost eliminated to the point where I am weaning myself off of Nexium, I cannot get a decent F*ing pizza to save my life. We have been really successful in recreating our favorite pastas, breads, cookies, cakes, brownies and pretty much everything else except for an even halfway decent gluten free pizza crust.

Food and bikes have been a wonderful facet of our marriage over the last 15 years.


My wife and I on Alp d'Huez:

alpdh.JPG


The greatest tartiflette ever:

[robin3mj]

How I came to be a foodie:

Growing up, my mom was a good, though not exciting cook. We didn’t eat out much, and about once a year she would latch onto a new recipe and work it into our diets. They got gradually more upscale/healthy over time. I remember when broccoli rabe seemed so exotic.

Once out on my own, I stuck to grilling things, plus pasta, rice and beans (thanks Zatarain’s!), salads, plenty of cereal. Then I met my wife, and eventually my mother-in-law who is a tremendous cook. Anyone who still believes that England is all boiled gray meat and potatoes should go visit and get convinced otherwise. Between these two new cooks in my life, and Anthony Bourdain’s book which taught me that even the best restaurants are cutting corners and delivering to a price point, I realized that you could make as good or better food at home.

A second major revelation was that there are hundreds of types and cuts of meat that are worthwhile, even if they’re not readily on display in your Safeway. Whole duck, belly pork, hanger steak, oxtail, and so on. I’ll try anything once, and often am pleasantly surprised to find I might like it (goat, pigs feet…)

We cook, and entertain, a lot. Better to spend a few hours in the kitchen on an afternoon and be able to linger with friends over dinner, than have hovering waiters trying to turn our tables at a restaurant. The booze is cheaper this way too.
My wife does most of the fancy cooking, while I man the grill (and new Big Green Egg!) and handle the slow foods. Short ribs, soup, and risotto inside, spare ribs, whole birds, or loins outside.

Cooking right takes extra effort, but once you get in the groove, and have a well-stocked kitchen and freezer (stocks, sauces, dough, decent meats), you’re well on your way.

[HSTFixed]

When I was 12 I wanted to go to the CIA. I remember my parents saying one day that we were going to my aunts for dinner. We lived in the same town and this type of thing happened often but for some reason this time I felt that I had to make something and bring it along. Not sure why, but I trace a lot of my cooking desires to that moment. I also remember my Dad teaching me how to make scrambled eggs. It was probably after I'd asked him for the 10353 time to make me some eggs and he thought, If I teach him now, I'll never have to do it again. Scrambled Eggs are still one of my favorite things to cook. I ended up going to college for music, and while I was there I got a job in a restaurant kitchen. I was hired as a dishwasher and started on the Pantry station with no training whatsoever. Figured it out enough that after two or three months I was working the grill/fry station. The whole menu from the bar came from me so it got pretty busy during the summer, and looking back I don't even know how the hell I did it. Since then I got a job in the Prep foods dept of a Co-op grocery. I've been there 3 years and i'm a supervisor now. The majority of my food learning has been on my own and from books. I think real food is very very important and that the vast majority of modern diseases are caused directly by the shit diet most people eat. Go to wal-mart and look at the jumbo sized carts filled to the brim with food-like products. I love making things from scratch. The time spend is well worth it and always rewarding not only with a feeling of accomplishment but a delicious meal. Here's a brief list of books I recommend.
Cooking By Hand Paul Bertolli

The River Cottage Cookbook Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall
The River Cottage Meat Book by Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall

Charcuterie by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn
Ratio by Michael Ruhlman

All by Thomas Keller
Ad Hoc At Home
The French Laundry Cookbook
Bouchon


All by Jennifer McLagan
Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient with Recipes.
Bones: Recipes, History and Lore
Odd Bits: How to Cook the Rest of the Animal

The Momofuku Cookbook by David Chang

On Food and Cooking, the Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee

The Complete Techniques by Jaques Pepin (or wait for his new book out later this month called The Essential Jaques Pepin 750 recipes from my life in cooking)

Cured: salted, spiced, dried, smoked, potted, pickled, raw by Linda Wildsmith

All by James Peterson
Cooking
Baking
Sauces: Classical and Contemporary Sauce Making

Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon

Making Soup is really the best way to learn about seasoning and flavor. salt and taste and salt and taste and salt and taste over and over until you gain an understanding of how it affects flavors. This to me is the hardest and most interesting and most important thing about good cooking. Butter is second in importance..... not really but boy do I love butter.

Good fat is the one thing most obviously missing from the modern diet. Pork Fat. Beef Fat. Butter. Duck Fat. They're all good in my opinion, and rapeseed oil, or grape seed oil, or Sunflower Oil, or Safflower Oil, or Corn Oil or any of the modern seed oils that are highly processed/heated/ruined before they even make it to the store shelves are suspect. If we couldn't have possibly used any of them 150 years ago because the technology didn't exist, then they aren't a healthy alternative to something humans have been eating for thousands of years. That wouldn't make any sense to me. Margarine is the problem. Butter is not.

So fry your french fries in tallow. Sear your pork chops in lard. Save your Bacon Fat. Roast a duck. Save the Fat. Make Pasta from scratch. Make a loaf of bread. Cook Real Food. Every chance you get.