Reading about cooking (and logistics)

I’m in the middle of a bunch of unsatisfying books right now that are all teaching me fantastic things while annoying the hell out of me. I can’t recommend them for what they are, but I definitely value all of them.

Ota’s _The Kitchen_ is a deeply weird tour of historically preserved or restored kitchens and meals cooked in them by extremely talented women historians / preservationists (an occasional man makes an appearance) OR in other kitchens but in the style of the period that the kitchen was preserved from. Ota’s descriptions of the cooking equipment (sometimes multiple eras of cooking equipment) are at times off-putting, and there are only line drawings for illustration. However, it’s easy enough to find photos of all the places he went online. As a read, it has a lot of problems. But in terms of thinking about the terrain of cooking equipment and how it evolved over time, I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen a better source.

David Chang and Priya Krishna’s _Cooking at Home_ tries to help the reader identify the flavors they like, develop the confidence to work with what they have already (in terms of equipment, food, knowledge), and adapt to time and money and other constraints. That’s absolutely awesome in principal, but the implementation is super weird. DC is obsessed with salt, and at the time of writing this book was basically erasing all other flavor contributors (using neutral fat, neutral acid and neutral sweetener — of course you are going to go heavy on the salt and MSG if you zero’d out all the rest. This is like the worst D and D character ever, only in food).

Dara Orenstein’s book, _Out of Stock_ was flat out a mistake on my part (altho not just my mistake — I had a lot of help). It is a book about the politics of developing foreign trade zones, but I thought it was about warehouses and logistics. There is definitely overlap! But the focus is all on something else that I can see is relevant, but my focus is elsewhere. Reading this is like trying to figure out what all the women and children in history were doing in an Old Skool history text. It’s just not there, except by weird accident.

I don’t want to let the books off the hook for their very real problems (which I have blogged about in some detail already, and I’m sure there will be more detail to come). But I _do_ want to express my gratitude to all of these books, the authors, and the large teams of other people involved in making these books happen. I’m learning a ton, and it is wonderful. Don’t let my complaining get you down.

Liveblogging: the Brisket dishes

So, this is the home cooking strategy I call “Thanksgiving” : cook a big thing, and then build meals using it for days.

Pseudo-pho

Brisket scraps, broth, spices, simmer for a half hour. Strain the broth back out, but don’t toss the meat. Cook strain rinse package rice noodles. Bowl the noodles, top with brisket, ladle broth, garnish with the usual stuff. Plausible strategy.

Egg drop soup

Season broth with salt. Yeah, he said it. Cook rice cakes in the broth with scallions. PK ads soy sauce (you know, cause it is still not salty enough) and honey. (Honestly, I think she’s just looking for the bean flavor, which who wouldn’t be in this bean starved book.) Once the rice cakes are to where you want them, bring it to a boil, beat an egg, reduce egg, whirlpool, drop the egg. Garnish. Plausible strategy; I personally think they made a mistake by not using fermented black bean paste, but if you don’t have it on hand, sure, fine.

Brisket salad

This is fundamentally a dressing strategy, plus lean brisket slices and shredded iceberg and scallions. PK really likes it, and does not mention adding mint to it, which is a failing so dire in a person who _grows mint on her windowsill_ that I just don’t know what to say.

Kimchi brisket

Rice, kimchi, brisket. And yes, he does add still more salt to the brisket. He does acknowledge you could put some additional vegetation on the plate, or even put this in a wrap instead.

Sukiyaki

Heat broth (add soysauce, mirin, sweetener). Thin sliced veg, brisket (cabbage makes an appearance finally, I could wish he specified but why go there. He might not have learned about napa cabbage until arriving in California). Egg dipping sauce and yes, he added ponzu or soy to that. Why.

Honestly, this is a little weird? Because trad sukiyaki will have exactly that soy sauce, mirin, sweetener combo -as the broth-, and the meat will be raw. There wasn’t really any time or effort saved here versus that. His presentation ending in noodles is right.

Beef and broccoli

He likes mushy veg. *shudder* Look, it’s just a preference, so it’s fine. But also, *shudder*. It’s exactly what you would expect. Minor time/effort savings by having the brisket cooked ahead. He nukes the veg; plausible.

I’ll be back; gotta go deal with ice.

OK.

“Make brisket with “boiled” potatoes and hot mustard”

I have honestly never understood the whole eat potatoes with bread and condiments and call it a meal thing, however, a _lot_ of people do this. OK, here it is.

Wash golf ball sized potatoes (remember, he disapproves of peelers and peeling), “coat them in salt”, and nuke ‘em till tender. I’d peel them, and I wouldn’t salt them, but totally fine with nuking them. I mean, I almost never do, because I fucking own an air fryer, but you do you. Nuke sliced brisket. Charcuterie serve with rice AND bread and pickles if you feel like you really need a veg, and of course Japanese hot mustard and mayo. This is _absolutely_ hangover cooking.

Basic idea is solid — I’d quarter, air fry, no salt, and either have bread or rice, not both. The mustard and mayo is solid, tho.

Brisket sandwiches

Why is this in a cookbook.

Warm brisket in microwave with bbq sauce or “chipotles from a can of chipotles in adobo”. White bread, vinegar on the side. Prefaced with, you could use a hamburger bun, or add shredded cabbage or onion. Why is this here? So he can present his how to make a bbq sauce strategy. It is plausible.

Brisket juk

There’s a link here to a section about juk and risotto; there are shortcut directions for making rice porridges in general. That’s pretty awesome! It’s something that a lot of us are already doing, but it rarely makes its way into a “real” cookbook. Not clear if this book counts, but it’s a beachhead, anyway.

This is _absolutely_ a bog standard recipe. It has measurements for everything: volume, time, etc.

Brisket fried rice

It’s fried rice using fatty cooked meat. Fine. I wish he could bring himself to put some actual vegetables into his fried rice, but that’s asking way too much. Weirdly, not that much added sodium in this.

Summary of the brisket section. This is actually fairly plausible as an intro to cooking book. You learn how to cook a big cut of meat, and then make a salad including making the dressing, a charcuterie plate, a rice porridge, fried rice, noodle bowl, soup, sandwich including a bbq sauce, and a meat-and-veg entree. Solid balance of options here, and rather than presenting Serves 4 or Serves 2, he indicates what his base will serve and gives indications for how it scales.

Oh, done with the brisket! Next up: chicken.

Liveblogging: the chicken dishes

“I want to use this space to make the case for boiled chicken.”

“With roast chicken, you can really only ever serve it hot — I’m sorry, but cold roast chicken just isn’t great”

“If I roast a chicken with salt and pepper, that fundamental flavor will never change unless I have some kind of dipping sauce”

“Roasting a chicken well is way harder than one might think. You need to season it properly, truss it, have the right aromatics. You need to know how to carve it.’

I’m debating. I mean, I might just skip this? I probably will not do a detailed critique, because this person has just told me very, very clearly that they have no idea what they are doing when it comes to chicken. Roasting a chicken is ridiculously easy. You need a good chicken, and you need a good pan. You need an oven that can consistently hold temp at or a little below 300 degrees (Not All Ovens, alas). You need to remember to turn the thing over partway through. And you need time. But that’s really it. It requires absolutely no seasoning whatsoever. As to the needing to know how to carve it, I think we now understand why this person thinks you only need two knives in the kitchen. Not that you can’t carve a chicken with a chef’s knife. Just.

Basically, he puts the whole chicken in a pot of salted water (even he realizes not to overdo the salt here) (but honestly, I think he is not being careful to buy unsalted / unbrined chicken, so the trouble has already begun) and boils it for 45 minutes.

Only morbid curiosity is carrying me forward at this point. This is where you basically have shredded chicken. I suspect all the recipes are going to be for shredded chicken.

Take it out. Cool it. Remove the meat (that won’t be hard). Put the carcass back in with seasonings and aromatics. Simmer until you feel like that is done. Take the carcass out (how is it not completely fallen apart at this point? You’ll be scooping bits out. Put the meat into the broth.

PK’s comment here is hilarious. She wanted to know how to get the meat off the chicken. Seriously? Fork. Chopsticks. Fingers. Whatever. She used tongs. Civilized. “He told me that I could just Google it (like he always does) or figure it out through failing a bunch of times”. Wow. Why do we need a book for this?

Chicken noodle soup.

At this point, there’s a rewind to before putting the meat back into the broth. That’s confusing. Doesn’t matter. His chicken noodle soup involves seasoning the meat while out, and then putting it back in. Valid strategy. He is a cook the noodles separately person, and bowls broth-noodles-chicken, then garnish. Valid strategy. Seasoning for this is pan asian.

“For something more Northern Italian-inspired*”

Fridge night soup. FENNEL HAS MADE AN APPEARANCE!!!!! OK, I’m in for at least the rest of the chicken chapter. I would have missed the fennel if I had not stuck around out of morbid curiosity! There’s hope for him.

AND BEANS!!!

Adds parm rind to the broth. *sigh* Rosemary, _GREENS MAKE AN APPEARANCE_!!! The aforementioned fennel

This is an absolutely plausible soup.

Link to relevant experts. There’s a little dialoge between DC and PK about white cookbook authors co-opting stuff and DC not wanting to be a part of that. Followed by a separated by cuisine, not white-people-co-opting list of books to refer to for real expertise. Solid solution.

“If you want a little mala flavor”

Sichuan chicken soup.

Plausible. Fennel seeds. I should actually figure out a variant on this to make, because R. can’t have allium, and this would be a delightful alternative.

Campbell’s style, for when you have celery

Nuff said — it’s pretty standard except maybe for the parm on top. A variation after for chicken and dumplings, either southern style or korean. A cheat using packaged dumpling wrappers.

Chicken Rice

Rewind back to the boiled chicken and rather than shredding, cut off the breasts and slice into medallions.

I don’t think I’ve ever had this Hainanese dish; it is seasoned rice, with poached chicken, and a bunch of condiments. Kinda cool.

Chicken Salad

Mayo, shredded chicken, vinegar, herbs. Wow. He really didn’t put anything else in there. Yikes. Like, even the herbs are just parsley and dill. Inevitably, he adds salt.

I’m a little spooked here. My chicken salad has so many other things in it, it does not technically need the chiken. *shrug*

Chicken pot pie

He uses puff pastry. Fair. Even he admits this tastes better with roasted chicken than boiled. Ha. Link to how to roast chicken. “For chicken, because it cooks faster, you’ll want to cook it for more like an hour at 425. Chicken has less fat than pork or beef, so you may want to rub it with butter or oil before you roast it.” Well, I guess we now know why he doesn’t like roast chicken. His chicken pot pie has onion, carrots and frozen peas. Standard. Also, incredibly boring.

Family meal chicken

Apparently, he ate this a lot working at restaurants. It is a weird sheet pan meal. 500 degree oven!!! Quarter a whole chicken, arrange on a wire rack over a sheet pan. 30-40 minutes until cooked through and golden. Optionally put stuff under the rack to catch drippings: potatoes, onions are the extent of his creativity here.

Honestly, use a fucking air fryer.

Moving on.

PK does not like boiled chicken. Her version of sheet pan chicken is way better. She used bone in thighs (correct!) and rubbed them with a rib rub from Buxton Hall BBQ in Ashevillle, NC.

Judgement time: Cooking a whole chicken and then using it to make soups, noodle or rice dishes, pot pie, chicken salad is a great strategy, and he covers a lot of ground here. The sheet pan chicken sounds awesome. However, he doesn’t know how to roast a chicken, and there is a _lot_ missing here as well (total absence of wraps, and minimal appearance of beans, but also the entire stew end of chicken dishes is absent except the pot pie. It all comes down to the boil strategy. This is a lot weaker than the brisket section, imo.

Liveblogging: the chuck dishes through to ground meats and marinades

Make gravy

He had wondra flour listed earlier, but he only mentions flour here. Drippings, herbs, add butter if you need it. He gives reasonable consistency directions. “You shouldn’t be able to taste any flour.” His directions _do start_ with drippings and flour on medium, but while he gives _consistency_ directions he does not give the kind of directions you need to get a roux at that point. Which is a bummer! This is the place to explain how that works.

Pseudo gochujang jigae

Beef stew, as near as I can tell. Cube, into the pot with onion, scallions (really? Not just the whites and save the greens for later? Whatever), various seasonings. Cover meat with water or broth and you know he’s in favor of more salt here. Cover, boil, simmer. Add chopped cabbage and sliced daikon (should have added that daikon much earlier, or specified that it should be sliced VERY thin!) then glass noodles and fresh or rehydrated shiitakes in the last few minutes. !!! Those shiitakes need to go in earlier if rehydrated!

Need to go deal with ice. Thinking a lot about order of ingredients in mixed wet dishes.

Make jangjorim

This is _not_ a use cooked already meat recipe, and it also seems mildly odd to have it in the chuck section instead of the brisket section, but since this is a cooked-from-raw, it almost seems to belong on its own somewhere else.

I have no opinion about this recipe.

Next section!

Pork Butt

Directions for roasting. I’ve never roasted pork butt. This looks like a You Should Use an Instant Pot recipe, and R. usually does for this.

bo ssam (imagine umlaut over the a)

Apparently he is known for more complex version of this recipe in an earlier cookbook.

This is a rewind and don’t do the crisp it part of the roasting instructions. You will, but after putting a mix of spice, sugar, salt on first.

Extremely abbreviated instructions for serving it Korean style (lettuce cups?) and a variety of alternatives.

Pork tacos

“Puree the pan drippings from the roast with half a can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce and other seasoning.” Cook it more, shred it, taco it. You know the drill. Plausible.

Pork steaks and gravy

Sliced mushrooms cooked in a pan with butter. This uses sliced roasted pork butt as thick steaks. Crisp under the broiler. Boy, the Breville would do that really well — R. used the broiler setting in the Breville for pork belly and he was saying, I don’t need a salamander now.

Use the buttered mushrooms to make gravy with pan drippings from the roasted pork. More or less identical to earlier gravy instructions. Gravy on the steak, served with greens, roasted potatoes and buttered noodles. Seems a little weird to have roasted potatoes and noodles?

Shanghainese-style stew

Cooked pork butt chunks, pan drippings, sugar, soy sauce vinegar and “a ton of sliced fresh ginger” with “enough water to dilute the seasoning level to a pleasant but not intense salty-sweet”. Plausible. And then reduce the liquid on medium heat to General Tso’s chicken level of sticky. (<— his description) Rice and pickled veg on side. Sounds pretty good actually. Traditionally done with pork belly, _which I have in the fridge_. Hmmm. This is the _first_ recipe I’ve been tempted by.

Kimchi stew

Shred pork. Combine pan drippings with kimchi, onion, gochujang. Heat. Add 6 cups water. Boil. Cover, simmer. Add pork at the end, a block of tofu cubed. Garnish. Rice. Plausible, but sounds kinda salty for me.

Pseudo pozole

Use it up dish. Toast chiles in fat in pan on low heat. Blend (oh, wow, clean that blender thoroughly after, tho!) with soy sauce, sugar, cumin, cloves, oregano, MSG and salt wtf why are you adding MSG now?

OK

2 pounds shredded pork, the above paste, hominy corn (he’s actually giving real measurements for all of this, BTW, so much for anti-recipe), water. Boil simmer cover don’t let it get too low. Last 45 minutes add onion. Garnish. Plausible.

Pulled pork sandwiches

Link to his bbq sauce page

Shred pork, vinegar, sauce on bread or bun, pork in the middle

Yeah, that’s not an actual recipe, but okay. Also, where are the pickles.

Pork with tonnato (not a typo) sauce

“It complements the meat’s unctuousness and fattiness”. That’s redundant.

Blend 6 oz can tuna packed in oil, 1 lemon’s juice, 1 egg yolk, olive oil, capers with juice, pepper.

Thin slice pork, top with sliced fennel, arugula and parm. Tonnato sauce on the side.

Weird. Would try a bite but probably won’t bother to make it. Altho you never know. I really like capers, despite the massive saltiness.

Pork with cabbage and mlk

Undderroast and don’t crisp the roast; this is a rewind.

Big chunk head of cabbage and “sweat” it with a sliced onion in some of the pan drippings. Season. ROOT VEGETABLES HAVE FINALLY APPEARED!!!! MIRACLE! Turnips, rutabaga both mentioned, altho honestly I feel the lack of love for parsnips and kohlrabi is entirely uncalled for, instead the lowly carrot and potato are specified. Whatever. Big chunks of pork.

Cover veg and pork with whole milk plus a bit. Good Goddess. Why. OK, well, I’m never making this, what would be the point. Boil cover simmer. Yes, it will curd. Serve with rice or noodles or bread. Why? I mean, you _have the root veg in there_. *sigh*

Next Section!

Short Ribs

He says you don’t need to sear them first. He’s right.

Galbi jim

“My mom adds almost no liquid, puts a giant lid on the short ribs, and doesn’t look at them until 3 hours later. To this day, I have no idea how she does this without burning them.” Probably cooking them at a very low heat, but what do I know.

Overnight soak in the fridge, apparently to get the blood out.

Food processor (not the blender this time. Interesting. Soy sauce, honey, fresh ginger, garlic, toasted sesame oil, asian pear — he allows apple pear or apple juice sub, basically wants the malic acid — and sesame seeds. This is the sauce. PK likes the sauce and says it is very resilient to ratio variations.

Sauce, pepper, water to cover, boil high, drop to medium for 2 hours (!!! Yeah, he really doesn’t understand what mom was doing — she was doing a steam cook in that pot) adding water to maintain level. Add chopped carrots onions baby potatoes, simmer. Garnish. Rice. PK says: Dave is opposed to falling off the bone, but I forgot and it was falling off the bone and it was fantastic and my dinner party was raving. I believe PK.

Alternate timing provided for chicken or oxtails. Alternate liquid for cooking the shortribs in with seasoning adjustments.

Plausible.

Galbi tang

Overnight soak again. Dutch oven, water, grated garlic cloves this time. Cover by an inch, boil, topping up water 30 minutes. Add thick sliced onion and a daikon — wow, that’s ridiculous, given the range of size on daikon — 2-3 more hours at gentle boil covered. Remove radish when fully cooked and reserve. Vermicelli at the very end, more grated garlic, more black pepper. There are some tricks with removing and re-adding the ribs to reduce the broth further without overcooking the meat. He never said when to re-add the daikon. I’m assuming as part of the vermicelli step?

Next section!

Oxtails

Nice little homage to Jamaican food.

Another overnight soak.

Another blender sauce.

There is actually a really interesting description of two different techniques. One is a stovetop boil; the other involves roasting the oxtails for a half hour in a 450 oven. This is very reminiscent of an ex-boyfriend’s brown veal stock technique.

gomtang

Instructions are almost word for word the galbi tang instructions, but with the oxtails. Right down to not telling you when to put the radish back in.

Next section!

Ground Meat and Marinated Meat

One of the things I noticed in one of those how to adult books (which included like an entire cookbook in it, bizarrely) was how absolutely insensitive to dietary constraints it was. A book full of recipe leaning heavily on a short list of ingredients is totally useless to someone who has issues with even one of those ingredients — it also often means the author of the cookbook has no idea how to adapt a recipe away from that short list of ingredients.

The ground meat seasoning is just astonishing. It is so easy to keep frozen ground meat unadulterated in the freezer, but DC pre-preps it with bread crumbs (ah, the gluten crowd is already screwed), eggs (vegans, and egg allergy folks, bye!), garlic and onions (both my husbands and my friend J, see ya!). Then a list of salty ingredients (I’m out, but I was probably out with the bread crumbs anyway, if they contained milk) including soy sauce (soooooo many people with soy allergies), fish sauce (vegetarians, vegans and the fish allergic are out, and honestly, I usually use tamarind instead of fish sauce these days because fish sauce gives me headaches), parm (I’m out for dairy, and also the vegans), chaat masala (I’m out, mango). He adds sweetener (why). And then add more! Gah.

The only ground meat we season extensively is for meat loaf, and then it’s mostly ras al-hanout. Anyway.

Meatballs

Yeah, I mean what he did to that prepped meat mixture is everything you could possibly need for meatballs or meat loaf. Sure.

But this: “I make meatballs when I want a dinner that everyone is going to love and that doesn’t require much thought to put together”. His meatballs would be hated by everyone in my family and/or sicken us — and that extends to most of my chosen family as well.

He has plausible instructions for cooking meatballs.

Dumplings

“Place a small spoonful of the meat mixture … into the center of a store-bought wonton or pot sticker wrapper.”

*blink*

Okay, then.

Reasonable instructions for cooking the dumplings.

He doesn’t put ginger in his dipping sauce. I want credit for how restrained I am being here.

Dduk galbi

Take the meat mixture and cook it like a half inch thick pancake that fills the pan. Weird, but plausible.

Serving it with rice and kimchi makes sense, but he offers alternatively to cut it up and serve between bread with lettuce and mayo. That would totally be hangover food.

Burgers

He prefers a griddle, and acknowledges that you don’t need the seasoning for the burger (he still thinks you need salt, but this is him, so we’re used to that by now), but why not, he says, and then “why not add Russian dressing and rye bread and make it a patty melt”?

Directions for smashburgers. Plausible. Altho his Russian dressing, rye bread, seasoned ground meat patty melt thing is bonkers.

Meatloaf

I believe I mentioned that, but we of course would use ras al hanout.

He glazes with ketchup ; we use a jarred pepper thing which is unbelievably tasty.

His instructions for cooking are entirely normal, until he says, “Glaze one more time with ketchup after broiling.” Why. Don’t answer that.

Stuffed cabbage

napa leaves, boiled, wrap the seasoned meat mixture, make a broth with gochujang and ssamjang, and agave syrup. Put all the cabbage packets in the pot. Boil, simmer, cover, 45 minutes to an hour. Alternatively, bake medium in a dish covered with sauce then bake high to reduce the sauce. Plausible.

Nice interview with Joyce Cheng of Toronto to get some science on marinades.

Hilarious stuff about WishBone vinaigrette being the white people version of his marinade.

He also supplies his standard marinade, close to what he grew up with.

Shabu Shabu

Actual vegetables in quantity! Uses the partly frozen trick for thinly slicing meat.

PK actually added more salt than Dave did, to the meat before putting it in the broth. Hilarious.

All very plausible.

Liveblogging: microwave through to just before bread

This chapter is great.

Interview with Natalie Seymour.

A little explanation of how applying heat to food works in general. Microwaves can do Maillard. Disagreement about baked goods.`

Using a thermometer is mentioned!

DC advocates for cleaning your microwave.

“If you use your microwave as often as I do, you’re bound to have an explosion.” Um.

Rice

I don’t know that I’ve ever microwaved rice, I mean, other than to reheat already cooked rice dishes. Clearly an oversight on my part! I will correct that … soon.

1 cup of rice, 2 cups of water, uncovered, full power, 15-25 minutes.

Chawanmushi, some kind of egg dish, DC claims one ratio of water to egg to be perfect, PK has a different ratio but supplies DC’s from Peter Serpico. Who knows. I’m not going to bother. You do you.


That’s …. not a time savings? That’s how long it takes on the stove. WTF. Also, I don’t find that rice sticks all that much to the pan. And I never rinse rice, and it never matters, because I’m never trying to get fluffy, separated grains of rice. But wow, these people are rinsers. “My favorite way to do this is to fill a bowl with really cold water, add the rice, whisk everything vigorously, and then drain out the water. Do t his five times, then drain the rice well in a strainer, and then add the rice to the water or liquid you’re going to cook the rice in.” WTF

Juk

This chapter was referred to earlier in the book. Again, no time savings, and you have to take it out to stir it every 5-8 minutes, so why. Whatever. Sounds tasty. Various alternate flavor combos supplied, how to make it from already cooked rice, and also how to make a pseudo risotto.

Microwave version of pseudo arroz con leche

Uninteresting to me. Seems plausible.

Microwave version of Thai mango sticky rice

He includes stovetop rice instructions. They are not the best, but they are okay.

Fried Rice Instructions

Acknowledging that there is no great place in the book for it, and it has nothing to do with a microwave. Advocates for making fried rice every time you have chinese food takeout leftovers. Solid advice. There is an interesting flow chart that I don’t agree with in some detail, but it isn’t implausible. It’s worth reading, thinking through where your disagreements are and why. (One of my biggest issues is with the cook the raw then clean the pan. Why are you cleaning the pan.)

Next section: Chicken Thighs!

He’d better not fuck this up.

Oh no. He microwaves his chicken thighs. OMG. I’m not sure I can continue from here.

Nope, it gets worse. This actually _hurts_. I’m going to start skimming.

Why would you put potatoes in fajitas. Sorry, “fajitas”.

Blooming spices in the microwave; 30 seconds. Seems plausible.

“I don’t cook vegetables on the stovetop all that much anymore because most all of them lend themselves so well to microwaving.” This is my sister’s perspective. If you like your veg that way, fine, but usually my veg are incorporated into other dishes. With browning.

“There is nothing easy about fish cookery.” Um.

“Buying good-quality seafood is generally hard unless you’re willing to spend a lot of money, and then not overcooking it is made harder because of the stress of not wanting to waste that money. It requires finesse, and being exacting about temperature.”

Not really, but okay.

“I am doing so in a way that is as cost-effective, simple, and foolproof as possible: buying frozen, cooking in a microwave, and so on”. Buying frozen is Correct. Frozen-on-the-boat-and-never-thawed is the best fish you are going to get. That shit at the store that is thawed was frozen on the boat. [He says the same thing a page or so later.]

“I ain’t pan-roasting at home.” I don’t understand what’s wrong with just cooking it on the stove in a pan. Lid and coast. Not. Difficult.

Clams and Mussels

Oooh! Fancy.

Reasonable instructions. I sort of missing doing this. I should go track some down and do this again. It’s been close to 2 decades.

White chowder

Sausage, garlic, onion, tomato paste broth for the shellfish. Other variations suggested.

Steamed Fish

“Great fish, to me, is not about packing in as many flavors as possible.”

Followed by

Sauces possibilities, marinade possibilities, stuffing the cavity of a whole fish with aromatics.

For doneness, he uses a cake tester, to see if it comes out cold or warm. Because, you know, he is deeply opposed to actually owning a thermapen apparently.

BUY A THERMAPEN

Several techniques described: in a steamer basket in a pot, wrapped in parchment or foil, nuked, in a clay pot. Plausible.

Nice detail on the seafood dish build in a clay pot. It actually includes vegetables. An alternate build with mostly cooked rice in a pot, then layered thinly sliced fish and veg on top, finish cooking all together covered.

Frozen Shrimp

Yeah, not for me.

Shrimp with corn and potatoes. PK adds chaat masala. Sounds plausible and absolutely not for me. I’m trying to figure out if it would be worth it to try with some other protein, but mostly I’m thinking I’m just not a fan of corn anyway so why. Maybe if I had some landrace corn. Hmmm.

Escabeche — looks like a vinegar sauce? I’m not familiar with this one and obviously, I won’t be doing this with shrimp. Googling suggests there is an eggplant variation, so maybe if I get another eggplant from the CSA, I’ll try it with that. PK warns about the habanero and high heat combo so open a window. DC says seed the habanero if you are worried about the heat. It might be _nice_ to warn an unsuspecting reader to wash their hands carefully after touching that thing, if they didn’t wear gloves.

Section on freezers. As far as I’m concerned, freezers are for meat/poultry/fish, frozen french fries, short term extension of life of vegetables that you aren’t going to get to soon, berries when not in season, bread products, and butter. He has a more expansive view of freezers. Oh, and ice cream type stuff. Guest writer about properly freezing.

The science writer is in favor of boil before freezing. *shrug* Don’t freeze snap peas and it won’t matter? Freeze quickly — that’s solid advice. Metal sheet, small piece size — classic advice, I rarely care that much.

“Big hunks of meat freeze and defrost at a glacial pace, which risks both cellular damage and uneven thawing. Avoid the trouble by cutting the meat first into meal size portions.” Yeah, no. The meat arrives from Walden or Lilac Hedge already frozen. Don’t put hot things in your freezer. Solid advice. Minimize air exposure, sure.

Interestingly, while she mentions sourdough, she says “sliced” so it sounds like she means bread that has been cooked. When I first froze my sourdough, I was really wondering what was going to happen, since I put it in a gallon ziplock, open — just there in case something horrible happened on the way to or from the freezer, basically — crock and all. It was fine. I fed it about an hour before freezing, and after it thaws, I feed it and give it an overnight before using. Freezers are awesome and honestly, you really can overthink this. But the freezer attached to your fridge sucks. Chest freezers are better.

Next Section: Cooking Great Vegetables Even When All You’ve Got is Less Than Ideal Produce

Oh boy.

“My perfect meal these days is pea shoots sauteed with garlic, oil, soy sauce and chiles — that, with a bowl of rice”

PK asserts that Dave has always been really good at cooking vegetables. She also notes that he once famously hated cooking for vegetarian diners.

“Dave was determined to make vegetables the longest and most comprehensive section of this book, just to prove a point.”

If you have to prove a point this way, well. And indeed, “the meat section is definitely longer. But I think that’s because cooking vegetables is easier.”

Well, let’s see.

First, braising. Strategy is plausible. PK adds a note about sheet roasting veg with salt pepper and oil. Already, I am unimpressed because convection is not mentioned, but rather a “very hot oven until soft and charred”.

Next: Corn. Which I rarely consider as a vegetable, and when I do, I don’t like it. It’s better as a grain. Whatever. Blender frozen corn with milk, cook fresh or more frozen corn in it to get a pudding with whole corn kernels. “This is probably the best recipe in the whole book.” I have nothing useful to say here, other than that while I’m not _planning_ on reproducing this, I’m expecting some interesting corn from Brian Severson farms (blue hopi and some butcher red), so who knows what I might try. It won’t involve milk, that’s for sure.

“(If you’ve never cut the kernels off before, Google it — there are a million ways to do it, and every link pretends like it’s the only one that matters. They’re all fine.)” Hunh. I get ears of popcorn still on the cob from the farm share, and I wind up removing them with my fingers. Didn’t actually bother to look up how to do it?

PK feels like the corn pudding thing isn’t great as a standalone because it’s too rich. This sounds right.

Second method for veg is Raw

Dip in ssamjang or gochujang. He also supplies a ranch dressing recipe. I looked at it. He says it is “simply just a vehicle for MSG”. *shrug* I had some vegan ranch at the pizza place in Salem I like. Probably the only time I’ve had any kind of ranch. It was good. I’ll have it again some day. I haven’t bothered to make it.

Salad strategy follows.

Wollammssam

Fresh rolls? Spring rolls? No instructions for making the wrappers, so I’m assuming he bought them.

Third veg method: stir-fry

Several combinations recommended, strategy for stir-frying, flavor alternates.

Saute iceberg lettuce or cabbage PK says oil doesn’t cut it, only bacon fat

Mushrooms : high heat in oil (I really question this with olive oil — it can’t really be that hot, right?), then bean sprouts and a sliced red chile, then lime juice and fish sauce. *shrug* I doubt I’ll bother. I like my vermouth.

Ratatouille : diced or sliced but all one or the other. Eggplant, bell pepper, zucchini, cherry tomatoes, basil leaves some seasoning. Plausible

Buttered veg PK finds it too rich, suggests some lime juice

Pickles :
Cucumbers or radishes sliced thin, coated in salt or soy sauce and table sugar, 60 / 40. Wait. Plausible, altho not how I do things.

Mushrooms: hot water, dashi powder, vinegar, soy sauce, sugar. Boil, pound of mixed mushrooms, cook until tender, let cool, transfer to fridge. Not sure what I think of this. I may try it.

He has a section on kimchi, which is definitely not kimchi.

Escabeche is back, this time jalapenos: this is an actual, detailed recipe

Microwaving veg

salt-crusted microwave potatoes. It’s about what you think it will be. “But if you don’t like the pure taste of a salty potato, we can’t be friends” I am okay with that

nuke potatoes instead of baking them. Solid plan

“The trick to amazing mashed potatoes is adding a shitload of cream and butter and oil” And this is why I don’t bother

He suggests nuking potatoes to make gnocchi, but apparently had not actually tried it yet

Eggplant parm: included in this is a red sauce recipe. This is a baked strata build. It involves a bunch of cheese, so I’ve never done this. I did recently nuke a couple eggplants to “roast” them to make a dip that was going to be baba ganoush, except my sesame seeds had been in the freezer for a decade. It became a different eggplant dip instead. Leftover eggplant parm can become sandwiches or pizza, apparently. Link to a flatbread pizza crust elsewhere in the book

Cauliflower with a bagna cauda sauce

Rant about peeling. I peel. Altho not tomatoes.

Nuked version of the buttered veg, specifically carrots. Even he puts the lime juice in this one

Nuked chile lime brussel sprouts. Oh man, what a waste. Air fryer, finish in a pan with balsamic vinegar, bacon fat and walnuts. Come on!

Two dressings to go on nuked veg

Mushroom stock

Sauteed mushrooms

OH THERE IS A DUXELLES RECIPE HERE I should make duxelles

Mushroom salad (somewhat weird, also, parm)

Roasted mushrooms

Mushrooms under something that will drip while it roasts

“I love those bags of pre-cut frozen vegetables” yes. We know. I don’t.

Scientist on topic of frozen veg: do not thaw them and do not boil them unless you plan to puree them. some additional detail. I don’t care. Footnote to Harold McGee, tho.

“For a really long time, I didn’t understand how important beans and lentils ought to be in my diet.” I’m honestly surprised he thinks he knows that now.

PK “I was rolling my eyes while writing Dave’s introduction to this section.”

Really, I am here for PK, not for DC.

Buy good beans. Soak. “And similar to my philosophy on meat, when you make beans, you are often getting not just the beans, but also a flavorful broth that can be used in myriad ways.” Oh dear.

He describes a hamhock based bean and kale stew.

The section about dal and lentils is deeply hilarious because PK. DC gives a recipe that PK acknowledges is okay, but then PK gives her recipe, from Indian-ish (which I am really thinking I should probably get). DC responds by saying, yeah, her version is better. This is why you should learn from the experts.

Cream of vegetable soup: “In this recipe, you cook the root vegetables in cream and then garnish the soup with yogurt. This is because root vegetables are a perfect match for dairy.” Or, you know, you don’t actually _like_ root vegetables, and this way you don’t have to taste them. I, personally, air fryer root vegetables, if they are not soaking up something that is roasting on top of them. Parsnips appear!

I don’t think we’ve seen turnip greens yet. Oh well.

And we’re apparently done with veg, because we’re on to starches. And he really is serious about his starches. Spends time advocating with mix and matching noodles across cultures. Totally reasonable.

Cacio e pepe. Have never had this. There’s at least _something_ left when you take the cheese out of carbonara. Not much left when you remove the cheese from cacio e pepe.

Ginger and scallion noodles, the microwave version

A ginger-basil pseudo pesto

Scallion oil noodles — this involves shrimp

Cold noodles in broth — I don’t think I’ve ever had this dish, and it sounds like it has real possibilities. Technically, it is noodles in cold broth.

He has a spaghetti with red sauce, and then a re-cook of it, that I’m just not going to talk about here. W.T.F.

He has a somewhat appalling recipe for tuna pasta salad that he says contains no mayo. Sure. Tell yourself that while you put the egg yolk and oil into the blender. I know, I know, you put a bunch of other stuff in there, but _I saw the egg yolk, vinegar and oil go in_. Come on.

Pork belly sweet and sour

The description of pseudo shanghainese stew in the cookbook I’m reading piqued my interest. In the book, it was made with pork butt. But it is traditionally pork belly … and we had pork belly in the fridge. So.

Some not-quite-marmalade, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, unholy amount of fresh ginger, and some chicken broth in conjunction with some of the aforementioned pork belly (which was cooked with a bunch of things, which included ginger, red za a tar which has a laundry list in it but no salt, chipotle, brown sugar and ras al hanout), oh, and I almost forgot the brown sugar and black pepper. I had it with rice, and some reheated summer squash slices, and the last dregs of a local sriracha.

I pulled the pork out after a bit and cranked the heat to reduce the sauce to a nice sticky consistency, put the pork back and had it over rice with the summer squash. Really, really, really good. 10/10 Would do again. My rice wine vinegar is unseasoned, so the only salt is coming from the soy sauce, and whatever happened to the pork belly.

Liveblogging: bread through to …

He says a bunch of the usual crap about bread, and then points to Bryan Ford. Bryan Ford is part of the Magnolia mafia. No Thank You.

Flatbread recipe, makes 10-20. Why. Proofs the yeast with agave syrup. Sure. 3 cups of flour, salt, sugar, put the yeast in, add water, make a ball. Add oil. Knead. Bowl. Cover with a damp towel. Put it in a dark ? Room-temperature spot. Why. I have a proofing box. Why wouldn’t I use it. I also have a Breville 900 with a proofing setting. Why. Wouldn’t. I. Use. That.? Why wouldn’t I, at the very least, put it somewhere a bit warm? Come on.

Oh, wait, there is a bit here about putting it in a cold oven with some water that you boiled. Wow. This is definitely not the sophisticated end of bread directions.

Anyway. When it doubles / 3-5 hours (given how cold you’ve kept it, yeah), you can use it or freeze it or whatever. PK notes that freezing made it softer in texture. I have nothing useful to say about any of this. Go get your bread directions from somewhere else probably?

Paragraph of directions for making a flatbread. 1/4-1/2 cup of dough. Make a thin, 8 inch round. Olive oil. Stovetop directions.

PK this is fine, but do the buttered one. Can’t blame her. Everyone loves naan the best.

Buttered is the same, but with butter and salt and different shaping. The shaping recurs in later recipes so here: put stuff on top of the 8 inch from the plain, roll it up and then coil it. Flatten to 4-6 inch round. For buttered, it is butter and salt. For the next one, it is cheese, jalapeno chopped and pepperoni. (Which is then buttered at the 4-6 inch round stage. Why. That latter one is baked instead of cooked on the stove.

Actually, for that last, it was an 8 inch rectangle, which recurs in the pseudo stromboli. Again with the stuff on top, log but don’t coil it, bake it as a log and cut off rounds.

Pizza: wetter dough, second rise under plastic wrap. He’s got an odd sequence. I’m used to a pre-baked crust, but for his pre-bake, he includes the sauce — 20-30 minutes, take it out, put the toppings on, back into the oven for 3-6 minutes. Interesting. Probably works fine, and you’ll cook the sauce down more maybe? I might try that sequence.

Larissa Zhou, identified as having “helped create” Nathan Mhyrvold’s Modernist Bread puts a little detail on the within-normal-range-of-vague bread recipe.

I can’t say I’m hugely impressed by this essay, but I have a lot of idiosyncratic opinions about bread. “Salt and fat are also important in doughs. Salt provides flavor — forget salt once, and you’ll never do it again.”

Yeah, I can see why they brought her in on this thing.

It is absolutely astonishing that somehow, Nathan Mhyrvold’s name is never mentioned in any of this. But whatever. I can understand wanting not to mention him.

Done with bread! Next up: Condiments

“And don’t bother making your own mayo; the payoff is never worth the effort, and there are good store-bought options.” Says the person who made mayo in his tuna weirdness and pretended he didn’t. So far, he’s describing how you can mod storebought mayo, or combine it with other store bought condiments.

Vinegar and vinaigrettes. He whisks or shakes; PK uses a mini food processor. All valid.

Chile-based condiments. Lots of ideas here. He uses the word “formulas” but he doesn’t mean it at all.

He starts with a salad dressing (lime, olive oil, half a chile, sweetener, minced garlic, fish sauce, salt) Plausible, but not one I would do

The man who does not make mayo has a caesar dressing that includes egg yolks, juice of a lemon, and olive oil.

Absolutely standard dipping sauce: soy sauce, rice vinegar, scallions, chopped green chile, I have no idea what that sugar is doing there, toasted sesame oil, sesame seeds

Creamy “Korean Russian Salad dressing” : toasted sesame oil, oil, honey, sherry vinegar, soy sauce, gochujang, ssamjang — that one might be worth a try

White People French Vinaigrette: it’s another mayo from the no-mayo guy: sliced shallot, minced garlic, soaked in vinegar optionally strain, whisk in mustard, egg yolk and then stream in olive oil while whisking. Again, more mayo from the no mayo guy.

Like, he keeps doing this over and over again

Ranch dressing — it was referenced earlier in the book. No mayo — just lots of milk products

Pimento cheese: I just can’t. This entire category of food, ugh. And he follows it up with a grilled cheese sandwich using it *shudder*

We’re to the Misc chapter

Those mung bean pancakes look kind of awesome. Googling suggests that you can do this from flour. I’m thinking I won’t do the soak and blender thing, but just use the komo to grind lentils and rice, and proceed from there. Altho I might also skip the rice, based on PK’s mom’s observation that this is Korean pesarattu.

The crepes section is a little strange. I think this is where he tries to sneak over into baking territory, but on the stovetop, and incremental.

Book ends with a totally ridiculous dessert involving a dunkin donut glazed donut and ice cream. Sure. I won’t be eating it, obviously.