Let's talk about food

I don't know what its equivalent would be in the US, but in the UK an awful lot of students I know have used 'Delia Smith's complete cookery course'.TTFN,WK

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Combination of factors. My mother, to this day, can only make about three different dishes. So I never learned a lot of the basic stuff.

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Same with me. My mother hates to cook. I never learned much from her. I'm self-taught.

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Also, I'm one of those people who hate to be bored, so I always have way to much going on and taking the time to cook frustrates me.

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Well, cooking doesn't have to take a long time. Some of my favorite meals take no more than about 30 minutes from start to finish to make.Tell me, do you have descent tools? A good chef's knife, a heavy pot with a lid and a quality saute pan, that kind of thing?I find that a lot of people who don't like to cook are frustrating themselves because of equipment that works against them.

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However, this summer I'm going to have large amounts of free time, being as I'm staying in TN and can't work (foreigner) so if you can recommend a "cooking for dummies" type book, I may give things a try.

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Well, there does actually exist "Cooking for Dummies", but I don't own it so I can't say if it's good or not.It's not the cheapest book, but Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything" would be a great all-purpose, basic cookbook filled with lots of simple, unfussy recipes. I use it all the time. check it out here

try this.The joy of cooking is the rememberance of glorious successes highlighted by absolute failures. Without the later you cannot appreciate the former.So just do it.Start with something really simple, say canned soup. Pick a flavor you like, say tomato. Set yourself a goal, to have tomato soup five times and for it to be different and unique each time.Forget recipes, directions, instructions and guidelines.Open the can of soup. Look in the ice box and cupbord and see what you got. Got milk? Make it a creamed soup. No milk? Fix it with water. Got spices? Add no more than two and see what happens.Taste frequently. Have fall back position (read MickeyD's) for the later occasion.If you have some cheese, slice and serve with crackers alongside. Got lettuce, make a salad to go with it.After you have made tomato soup five times, stop and assess the results. What worked? What didn't? Both are valuable lessons that can be applied next time.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Thanks so much for the recommendation of the French Press, crash. I went out and bought one, along with a coffee grinder. Just made the best cup of coffee I've ever made.And Rrhain, I think it's also bad to leave coffee sitting under the grounds, as with a drip maker. Even if you turn the heat off, the coffee quickly starts to turn bitter. I've long used an insulated carafe for that reason. Works great.So next up, the tiramisu attempt. I might not get round to it this weekend since Riverfest is coming up (a local arts and music festival). There is also the problem of finding mascarpone cheese; I doubt our local grocery stores are likely to carry it so I may have to get some next time I'm in Jackson.Which brings up a couple more questions: where do you find mascarpone cheese, and how long will it keep in a refrigerator?

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Keep America Safe AND Free!

I'd be really suprised if a large fully stocked chain didn't carry it. But it is one of the easier cheese to make. Looks like there are several recipes on the net.http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art25894.aspIngredients1 pint heavy cream
1/2 tsp tartaric acid
1/4 tsp confectioner's sugarTakes about 12 hours. Which seems less then my books at home say. I'd let it sit 2-3 days.This one says 3 days.
http://recipecircus.com/...ow_to_make_Mascarpone_Cheese.html

I'd go with one of the Cooking for Dummies books. I haven't looked at it, but the structure of those books usually take a bit about history, craft, mechanics, etc. Jar's appoach does work, but works better if you have a sense of how things work to begin with or have lots of time and materials to play with. ;-)There are different flavors of the Cooking for Dummies books, so you can try for instance, Mexican Cooking for Dummies. Unlike many other cookbooks, the Dummies series is fairly inexpensive.Jar's suggestion of the Joy of Cooking is a very good one, and with little effort you should be able to find a cheap copy. Used bookstores or a garage sale in TN.This message has been edited by Trae, 04-12-2005 08:45 PM

I've never had a problem finding it in any supermarket chain large enough to have its own deli area; it's usually around there with the other fancy imported cheeses and olive tapenades and stuff. Otherwise its often near the cream cheese.It'll probably have a date on it to tell you how long its good for, probably a while unless you open it. I wouldn't keep it around for longer than 2 weeks, just as a guess.

I do own it, and it taught me how to make a decent omlette, which I thought was impossible, so I'd say that's a pretty high reccommendation.It covers a lot of cooking technique that's generally so basic other cookbooks assume you already know it, so that's nice. I read it a lot when I was just starting out. It has tips on how to choose cookware, what you need in a kitchen/pantry, etc. Lot of illustrations.I do also have the Bittman book, but its so large and unwieldy that I don't generally take it out too often. Plus I don't cook from recipes much.I get the Penzey's catalogue (free) and it has a lot of great recipes (their seafood chowder recipe was so good). Also my mom got me a subscription to Cook's Illustrated, which is a magazine that a lot of you here would really, really like - they really deconstruct recipes in a scientific fashion, they prepare many different variations on popular recipes and then feed them to a test panel to determine the best one, all the while examining the science behind the cooking. It's a really great magazine and I've learned a lot from it. (Like not to crowd beef when I'm browning it.)

I've got a love/hate relationship with Cook's Illustrated.I buy the bound books at the end of each year, so I do love most of what they do for all of the reasons you do, but...They are simply wrong a sizeable minority of the time regarding certain foods that they do those taste comparisons and ratings of.For example, they did a rating of inexpensive balsamic vinegars, and we carry one of the ones they tested. Their tasters rated that one very low, saying that it had a "very woodsy, juniper-like flavor" that nobody liked.The thing is, juniper wood is one of the woods that real balsamic vinegar is aged in. IOW, it is supposed to have a juniper-like flavor.I think the issue is that many of their tasters are judging the food on the basis of "Do I like it?" rather than "Is it good?". I don't think that many of the tasters they use are actually trained to answer the "Is it good?" question. ...and it does take quite a bit of training. Most chefs are not able to taste the way I can because they aren't trained to.The separation of those two questions is one of the very first things I learned when I began my career in the specialty food retailing business.It's irrelevant if I like something when I am judging it's quality. My job as a quality evaluator is to judge if it is good or not. Like, I really don't like coffee, but I sell it, so I taste it black all the time, because I have to understand and be able to identify what each sort of coffee we sell should taste like.I almost never actually buy a cup of coffee to drink by choice.

Yeah, I imagine that's the case. A lot of stuff we eat is an "acquired taste", right?I don't always go with what they recommend, myself - part of being a good cook is cooking to please yourself and your guests. Everybody's going to have different tastes in that regard. What I like is that the thorough deconstruction they do gives me a pretty clear idea of the latitude I have to play around with the recipe to suit my own tastes.

Hey, where in TN?
I'm in Nashville.
Just curious.

Yeah, I love the analysis of the recipe testing they do, and I own The Best Recipe, Cover and Bake, The Quick Recipe, and the desert book that I can't remember the title of.I have made their macaroni and cheese, beef stew, and coq au vin recipe dozens of times.

The highly exciting and very culturally rich Cleveland . I'm just down here for school. A little over two years left and counting.....

Hey, Cleveland has a world-class symphony, and very good museums, and a terrific newly restored farmer's market.But it's kind of a hole other than that.

Are you talking about Cleveland, Ohio? Because I am definately not. I'm in Cleveland, TN and have yet to see anything resembling a good orchestra. There have been a couple of good concerts at a nearby university, but that's about it.