Friday: dinner at Azucar

R. and I had dinner at Azucar, a tapas place in Maynard. I have no idea why we’ve never been there before. It was fantastic. We had the lamb, the duck, the baked dates. R. had a salad. I also ordered some bread. We had the “Nectar” Gonzalez Byass Pedro Ximenez sherry — super sweet and raisiny. I had a sherry cocktail also. Fantastic meal, great service, delightful ambience, live music that was not annoying. Definitely will be returning often.

T. drove to Oneil to see Elvis. He really timed it poorly, so we went in the van and brought his bike for him to come home on, as we were at dinner when he returned. Later, he went to Nara with a friend’s family to see a show.

Friday with Friends (replacement for Fancy Friday) was delightful with only minor issues with people accessing via the new link.

I got David Chang and Priya Krishna’s _Cooking at Home_, a non-recipe cookbook. I’m looking for a Cook Your Pantry (like Shop Your Closet) book that isn’t frugal. This is kinda that, but it’s really terrible. I’ll do some liveblogging.

I haven’t totally given up on _Out of Stock_, but I am taking a break from it for the moment.

Liveblogging a book that is not about warehouses, but rather cooking

(I’m rereading this to make sure that I am not regretting what I liveblogged last night and doing light editing for grammar. There will still be grammar problems, I promise you.)

In general, the book is what I was looking for. There are huge problems with the formatting. I normally accept the defaults on kindle books, but this is one of those fucking Let’s Use Light Grey Instead of Black for the Print books, and I am just not here for that. The book is anti-recipe, which is a big part of what I am looking for. Unfortunately, after going on for a bit about being anti-rules, this shows up parenthetically: “(The exception to all of this is dessert, where measurement and exactitudes matter. That is why I don’t bake.)” *sigh* [I sighed here because if you bake, you know that exactitudes do _not_ matter for most baking. But what you _can’t_ do while baking is taste as you go.]

The How to Season part provides an exercise to help figure out what seasoning you like. The little chart has barbecue potato chips (sweet and tangy), Flamin’ Hot Cheetos (deeply savory and spicy), Sour cream and onion Pringles (bold, tangy, salty and a little sweet) and shrimp chips (briny, sweet). This does not help me figure out a flavor profile, for sure. I think the only one on that list I could eat would be the barbecue potato chips, and I would rather stay hungry, honestly, despite liking barbecue and potato chips.

Next exercise: make a broth, divide it up in 10 containers, salt each one more than the one before, to figure out what your salt preference is. This is a _weird_ exercise! I mean, salt preference is intensely malleable, and we find out a little further on in the book just how bonkers David Chang is with sodium … and that he has to be on a low sodium diet for health reasons.

“Say I’m making a braise. … Here’s a combination I love: kimchi, fish sauce, and gochugaru.”

Salt, salt, and not actually that hot.

“Now to the gochugaru. I don’t want to blow your head off with spice, so I add just a pinch. . . At this point I’m probably tasting a good amount of sodium in the liquid, so I only have to add a little bit of salt.”

*sigh*

OK, you really can’t blow someone’s head off with gochugaru. But you absolutely will destroy me with that amount of sodium. I really hope the pork belly he is braising in this is unsalted, because if it started out salted, it is absolutely inedible at this point.

Priya Krishna’s comments at the end of this section are really great, and she describes how being in different places influenced how she cooked and ate. She also says this:

“He has kidney stones, which means he has to follow a low-sodium diet, so now, after enough time, he has readjusted his palate to enjoy foods with less salt.”

The “Our Favorite Ingredients” starts with Fats: organic olive oil. He’s doing it to try to eat healthier. *sigh* Toasted sesame oil to add at the end. And Kewpie mayonnaise for DC, but PK doesn’t like mayo, and puts in her preference for ghee.

Under sweeteners, we have agave syrup. I’ve used agave syrup. What a great opportunity to create flavor that they just avoided. Might as well just have some simple syrup made up for your bar and use that instead.

Salty Ingredients / Sources of Umami

Soy sauce (sure, expected), fish sauce (yeah, okay), MSG. *eye roll* Really, this guy just relentless hammers people with DOES THIS NOT TASTE AWESOME WOW SO AWESOME. It’s a theme. Don’t cook like this. It’s a terrible idea. He knows it is a bad idea, but seems unable to stop.

“It’s like auto-tune. If a dish is tasting flat, MSG will brighten it up.”

Big fan of dashi. No surprise there. “So many of my meals are just dashi + noodles and vegetables, or dashi + rice and vegetables.” It’s like he’s never heard of legumes or something. He does mention mushrooms next, and wraps it up with fermented pastes of Korea.

PK chimes in with asafetida, parm and chaat masala, which I had to look up. It involves mango, so I probably ought to skip that.

Garnishes: toasted sesame seed, sure, gim (this is nori), fine, furikake (because we need more salt). PK chimes in with kitchen herbs on the windowsill.

Aromatics: ginger (yay!), garlic (“It is crazy how much garlic I use…It is one of those ingredients that I can’t imagine food without. The flavor is so commonplace” Yes, yes it is.), shaoxing wine (look, I put vermouth in so much stuff I am in no position to complain about him having a favorite alcohol to add to food, altho I personally feel like subbing mirin is a terrible idea and you could do better with a bunch of other choices), wraps up with a bunch of onion options.

That’s really it for their aromatics! This is appalling. No fennel, lemongrass (I know I can’t have it, but why can’t they?), celery, bell pepper, carrot, celeriac. They didn’t even mention leek in the allium discussion. Spicy stuff shows up in the heat/spice section. Which is so boring I was honestly surprised smoked paprika didn’t merit a mention.

Acids: rice vinegar and lemons/limes. Really! That’s it, and apparently lemons and limes don’t even appear in most of the recipes. _Again_, so many lost opportunities to add flavor! “Rice vinegar is one of my favorite vinegars because it has a cleaner taste than other types.” Absolutely no discussion of what dishes would have one versus another. *sigh*

[ETA: There’s a powerful theme here, where he knows he needs to have spice heat, sweetness, and acidity, but he does _not_ want any of those flavors. I don’t know why he’s avoiding all these flavors, but you should not do this. Picking more highly flavored elements in these areas can result in deeply weird food, but honestly, that’s not necessarily something you should avoid! And also, adults who eat at various ethnic restaurants usually develop a pretty good sense of cuisine-specific combos. Olive oil and balsamic vinegar is absolutely cliche, but there are plenty of others, including the relentlessly american combo of apple cider vinegar and onion, and the rice wine vinegar/soy sauce/ginger combo of so many Chinese dishes. Indian cuisines have a ton of different vinegars and I am entirely ignorant.]

Next section: Carbs. He’s got a bunch of noodles (one would expect) and they disagree on rice (he’s short grain, she’s basmati). Wondra flour makes an appearance here. I don’t really know what to say; it’s an odd choice to advocate for in this kind of book.

Equipment checklist was apparently hard for him to commit to, and I can see why! There is just no obvious organized thought going on, and it sounds like he is insanely hard on equipment. PK is really skeptical of this section. He hates the thin plastic sheet cutting boards. He says chef’s knife that can be sharpened. Here’s what he says about paring knives:

“Don’t buy a super-fancy paring knife. A cheap one is all you need.”

Here’s what I have to say. Once you establish which knife is the knife you use all the time, get a really, really good version of that knife. For me, that’s a really good paring knife. I also have really good every other kind of knife. But if I only had _one_ good knife, it would be the paring knife.

He thinks a wok is necessary. I have felt that was about a wok in my past, but it’s been about 20 years now.

Le Creuset Dutch Oven; popular choice. Containers glass and plastic.

“The most basic/inexpensive towels work just fine, as you’ll go through these really quickly.”

I don’t really understand what he’s doing to his towels.

“Silicone whisk” he justifies this as being better than a spoon. Who would use a spoon? If you don’t have a whisk and are trying to whisk, you’d use a fucking fork. Re: the silicone part: “If you have a silicone whisk, you don’t need to own any other whisk.” *shrug*

Mixing bowls — anti-copper. Large spoon. He has a weird paragraph about this AND a separate section about ladles. Fiberglass chopsticks. Metal colander — really agree on this one, altho I think you really do have to have at least 2, and a couple of smaller metal strainers with long handles as well, but that could just be me. I use them all the time. I also really cannot emphasize enough how awesome it is to have good funnels.

Sheet trays. He advocates for a dangerous looking can opener, the Gangy Kankiri. Seems like a bad idea, but who knows. Silicone spatula. I would advocate for the smaller ones rather than the larger ones, and having at least 4.

He has a section on Donabe. He also has a section on microwaves, which I agree with. I _wish_ he’d talked a little about speed ovens, because it _sounds_ like this cookbook is basically headed squarely in the direction of a speed oven (use microwave to do most of the cooking, and then use convection to get things crispy/ develop flavor).

Fish spatula. I had to look up what that was, because the description got me nowhere. We’ve definitely owned at least one, but I’ve never used it. We _do_ use our metal spatulas all the freaking time. I would never put the metal spatula in a tier 2 section.

Serrated bread knife. In tier 2. *eye roll*

Immersion blender. We have one. R. uses it. I basically never do. PK advocates for a miniature food processor. I’m like, I have a blender, a full size food processor and honestly, a knife. It’s fine.

Rice cooker. This paragraph has a fucking _gem_ in it.

“Because many rice cookers can also function as pressure cookers, you won’t need an Instant Pot.” !!!

I bought the instant pot so I could _get rid_ of the rice cooker and the pressure cooker. Altho, hilariously, I now always cook rice in a pot on the stove now. Altho! Funny story! I was using that same pot for popcorn until it was busy with beans and A. wanted popcorn. I switched to a different pan, and realized belatedly that the other pan was way better for popcorn anyway. You learn by doing!

Plastic sheet cutting boards. Stack on top of wooden board for meat. *sigh* Because, you know, having a real plastic cutting board of the slab type would be horrible?

Potato masher. “Get a potato masher, and you’ll use it way more often than you think.” Nope. I have one. I use it maybe once every three years. And I always regret it and switch to something else anyway, generally a fork.

Microplane grater. This equipment list is so weird! Box grater makes no appearance. Food processor makes no appearance. But microplane grater is here. Whatever. They’re nice. We own two.

Wire rack. How is this on the tier 2.

Parchment paper. Ditto.

Cast-iron pan. We’ve got a few, but the only ones we use consistently are the lodge fry pan (for chicken, on the stovetop) and the le creuset baker.

Peppermill. And this is in tier 2.

Tier 3!

Serving bowls, knife sharpener (yes, we have a really nice kit), mortar and pestle (I’ve owned these but never used them consistently. Coffee grinder dedicated to spices, sure. Food processor, sure). Small whisk. SMALL WHISK IS TIER 1. Goddess, what is wrong with these people. You do _not_ need an immersion blender, but you do need a small whisk. Chinois or fine-mesh strainer. I don’t have the conical kind (and apparently, neither does he, because he says he wishes he had one) but I do have a couple of long handled fine mesh strainers which I use all the freaking time. Tier 1!!! Will contemplate the conical kind.

Tweezer tongs. Gotta say, found this surprising. I would have expected him to use the extra long chopsticks instead.

“Kitchen tools you may think you need but that you don’t actually need”

This should be entertaining.

Pro-grade pots and pans (copper or fully clad). Oven mitts “Unless you are baking at crazy high temperatures, just use kitchen towels.” OK, I think we have figured out why he goes through kitchen towels so fast!

Instant pot. Wow, he really doesn’t like these. And yet, so many delightful things come out of that Instant Pot. It’s a great pressure cooker AND a crock pot. I got rid of a pressure cooker, 2 crock pots and a rice cooker when I got the Instant Pot. Haven’t regretted it for a second.

Salt crock. I didn’t even know these existed. They are adorable. Calling them a marketing scam is a little odd, when clearly this is a knick knack. “Wooden blocks of knives. You really only need two”. OK, so this is a problem. First, the block nicely holds the 8 steak knives, which we need, and I don’t want floating around in the flatware drawer because we are not actually feral around here. Second, we have a bread knife (see: not being feral), and we have two cooks and thus need two chef’s knives and two paring knives. That’s 13 knives. Fuck you, DC. Buy a block without the knives, tho, and sized appropriately for the knives you do own. Alternatively, magnetic rack, if you have the wall space.

_He thinks we don’t need peelers._

Wow. I mean. Wow.

Also, there is no juicer anywhere here of any sort. I’m not sure how many I own, none of them powered.

Also, tier 1 did _not_ include a thermometer! Get a thermapen. You’ll never regret it.

There’s an essay about why you shouldn’t use recipes and it’s … look, I went into it thinking recipes are a terrible idea, and she nearly convinced me to use recipes. That essay did not work for me at all.

There’s an essay about food safety that advocates for using a thermometer (get a thermapen! You won’t regret it!); DC follows up with, la la la I just ignore all that.

“The safest way is to place meat in the refrigerator on the bottom shelf to thaw overnight, or for a few nights if it’s a large cut, or a whole bird.” Ha ha ha ha ha yeah, no, what the fuck, how warm do you keep your fridge? Put something on the bottom tray in our fridge and it will freeze. That’s why the cheese lives down there. We don’t call it the refrigerator of immortality for no reason at all.

Finally, we are cooking!

General approach to meat: “Buy a more affordable cut of meat.” Well, that’s precise. “Season it. Boil or roast it. Turn it into a whole bunch of different dishes.” In my taxonomy of cooking styles, this is “Thanksgiving”.

His description of whether he boils, roasts, or some combination is deeply hilarious, because he totally slammed the Instant Pot, which would have made everything he’s trying to do so much faster and easier. Also, still thinking about the speed oven.

“Add enough water to cover the meat once you put it in (don’t put it in yet), and then season your water. With salt, yes, but also with whatever other seasonings you are looking to add. Season early and season a lot”

The rest of the description is a bunch of replace water that evaporates, make sure it doesn’t scorch, cut it up to speed it up, etc., but ultimately, it’s a whole bunch of You Could Have Done That In an Instant Pot.

The roasting section is less obnoxious.

He does finally concede that you should probably get a thermometer, but does not recommend any particular kind. GET A THERMAPEN!

Apparently, he had a pressure cooker explode on him, so he won’t use them. This explains a lot. In the paragraph where he mentions pressure cookers as an option, he concedes Instant Pots.

And I’m stopping JUST as I get to the dishes. Which is fine! It’s way past my bedtime.