Food and Putting it in Our Faces

[Xlucine]

My personal crusade is non-meat doner kebabs - it's the best application for meat substitutes, since the texture isn't like meat anyway, and you're relying on the seasonings for taste. They should exist, but they don't

[Belesarius]

My personal crusade is non-meat doner kebabs - it's the best application for meat substitutes, since the texture isn't like meat anyway, and you're relying on the seasonings for taste. They should exist, but they don't

REMOVE KEBAB!  Burn the heretic!

[xthetenth]

My personal crusade is non-meat doner kebabs - it's the best application for meat substitutes, since the texture isn't like meat anyway, and you're relying on the seasonings for taste. They should exist, but they don't

 

Done and done, that sounds like a great use for a cheese that doesn't melt.

[Zinegata]

Indian food is foreign to me because the Philippines for some reason managed to get cuisine from pretty much everyone except the Indians.

 

Seriously, it took a trip to Singapore for me to discover Indians actually have some sweet dishes.

[Belesarius]

Indian food is foreign to me because the Philippines for some reason managed to get cuisine from pretty much everyone except the Indians.

 

Seriously, it took a trip to Singapore for me to discover Indians actually have some sweet dishes.

Good Chicken Tikka Masala is fucking magical.  And the single best Indian dish that I have ever had was home-made Chicken Briyani made by a coworkers mom.  I would cheerfully assault hundreds to get a roasting pan full of that briyani.

[Belesarius]

Broke Bele just create a fucking culinary masterpiece that will feed him for the next two days.

 

Had a bunch of leftover basmati, so figured on making ghetto fried rice with some leftover bacon, mushrooms, green onions (to be purchased) and frozen veg.   Ok.. Going to be a bit pedestrian, but whatever.  Food is food when you are broke.  But I had just enough change to grab a package of chicken breast filets/supremes  (the little chicken finger sized muscle group you can rip off a chicken breast you debone yourself)...  So grabbed my green onions, and my package of chicken and head to the checkout with my $7 in change.  Ring it through, and all of a sudden, after ringing through my chicken, the cashier bolts off.  About 2 minutes later she comes back with a package of about 3/4 lb of assorted cut up stir fry veg.  For Free.

 

So my ghetto fried rice turns into all the motherfucking vegtables stir fried with some diced chicken and leftover bacon with lots of soya, siracha and garlic all stir fried together and then tossed with leftover basmati in a hot pan for a few.

[Donward]

I'm eating lots of salmon these days. Nothing like catching it, bleeding it, fileting it, cooking it and eating it less than an hour after it was swimming.

[Belesarius]

I'm eating lots of salmon these days. Nothing like catching it, bleeding it, fileting it, cooking it and eating it less than an hour after it was swimming.

I'd be down for eating it that fresh.

Especially grilled over an open fire.

[ShamefurDispray]

If you are frying, you can make pans essentially non-stick by heating up the pan first before adding the oil. Then you heat the oil up to frying temperatures before adding in the food you are frying.

 

Also, green onions are magical when it comes to their versatility.

[Toxn]

I'm eating lots of salmon these days. Nothing like catching it, bleeding it, fileting it, cooking it and eating it less than an hour after it was swimming.

Salmon is one of those impossible-to-fuck-up meats. I envy you.

[Scolopax]

Not entirely on topic, but I didn't want to make a new thread.  It's about food at least.

 

Online food delivery ordering is about to overtake phone ordering in the US

[Tied]

Ah yes, the last Human interactions are being phased out

 

No longer will you have to convince the operator that your having a party

 

Hell, just throw the box down my chimney, walking to the door might require me putting on pants 

[Zinegata]

Not entirely on topic, but I didn't want to make a new thread.  It's about food at least.

 

Online food delivery ordering is about to overtake phone ordering in the US

 

I work for a telco, and we now have more telephone lines that have a bundled DSL than telephone lines without any bundled Internet; with the former requiring a telephone line before getting DSL. And this is from a Third World country.

 

So yes, the growth in Internet is pretty explosive.

[Brick Fight]

Once the busy season is over, I want to start a blog that deals with cooking. Not recipes, though. I want to teach people to actually cook for themselves. It's always frustrating to see people who will only ever cook recipes and who buy pointless spices and equipment. With the right skills, you can go out, buy one or two pieces of meat/produce, and make a perfectly good meal without having to break out a recipe or measuring equipment. I always want to throw out the bottles of flavorless powder that just tumble out of every cupboard in America and replace them with a box of Morton's Kosher, some black peppercorns, and a $10 spice grinder. The quality of food in the country would increase a hundredfold overnight.

[ShamefurDispray]

Once the busy season is over, I want to start a blog that deals with cooking. Not recipes, though. I want to teach people to actually cook for themselves. It's always frustrating to see people who will only ever cook recipes and who buy pointless spices and equipment. With the right skills, you can go out, buy one or two pieces of meat/produce, and make a perfectly good meal without having to break out a recipe or measuring equipment. I always want to throw out the bottles of flavorless powder that just tumble out of every cupboard in America and replace them with a box of Morton's Kosher, some black peppercorns, and a $10 spice grinder. The quality of food in the country would increase a hundredfold overnight.

I will help contribute some simple stuff if you want.

[Toxn]

Once the busy season is over, I want to start a blog that deals with cooking. Not recipes, though. I want to teach people to actually cook for themselves. It's always frustrating to see people who will only ever cook recipes and who buy pointless spices and equipment. With the right skills, you can go out, buy one or two pieces of meat/produce, and make a perfectly good meal without having to break out a recipe or measuring equipment. I always want to throw out the bottles of flavorless powder that just tumble out of every cupboard in America and replace them with a box of Morton's Kosher, some black peppercorns, and a $10 spice grinder. The quality of food in the country would increase a hundredfold overnight.

A cooking techniques blog?

Sounds good.

[Donward]

Being something of a foodie, I'll be happy to help once my busy season is over.

[Sturgeon]

I am going to use this thread to preach a little bit.

I am a pretty big critic - I like to think - of America. I'm cynical, negative, and contrarian about that whole freedom thing.

But boy do we have food licked. Want to eat? For not so much money you have burger, tacos, burritos, Japanese, "Chinese", Greek, French-Vietnamese fusion, etc etc. All food cooked for you that is delicious, plentiful, nutritious, and cheap.

In previous eons, people have subsisted on nothing but boiled potatoes. Meat was a "once weekly" kind of thing. They worked hard and ate poorly for it.

 

In modern-day USA, if you eat poorly it's not because you can't get good food, it's because some kind(s) of food is your vice. This is not so in some other countries, even now. My sister lived for several years in Japan (an industrialized country), and she retells to me that they had not enough money for rice - and had to eat apples, instead.

I like having so much food. I hold many sins against These United States, but food is not one of them. God Bless America.

[Belesarius]

I am going to use this thread to preach a little bit.

I am a pretty big critic - I like to think - of America. I'm cynical, negative, and contrarian about that whole freedom thing.

But boy do we have food licked. Want to eat? For not so much money you have burger, tacos, burritos, Japanese, "Chinese", Greek, French-Vietnamese fusion, etc etc. All food cooked for you that is delicious, plentiful, nutritious, and cheap.

In previous eons, people have subsisted on nothing but boiled potatoes. Meat was a "once weekly" kind of thing. They worked hard and ate poorly for it.

 

In modern-day USA, if you eat poorly it's not because you can't get good food, it's because some kind(s) of food is your vice. This is not so in some other countries, even now. My sister lived for several years in Japan (an industrialized country), and she retells to me that they had not enough money for rice - and had to eat apples, instead.

I like having so much food. I hold many sins against These United States, but food is not one of them. God Bless America.

As a pretty big critic of the US, and someone who thinks Oliphant is an ass at times, welp.  Gonna 100% agree.  I think the US major cities have the whole food thing down pat.  And it has mostly spread here in Toronto.  I mean, it's only been 3-4 years since I knew what poblano peppers were and now they are easily purchasable.  Food, North America has down pretty well.  You want it? We can prolly make it/find it/make money off it.

[Toxn]

Relevant:

http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/detail.aspx?chartId=53384&ref=collection&embed=True&widgetId=37373

 

Personally, my prediction is that things like 'obesity' are going to seem like a quaint obsession within the next 50-100 years.

We're headed for a world where every farmable centimetre of the planet is being farmed, and one where more and more ersatz ingredients are going to go into foods.

 

However, 'ersatz' doesn't mean 'bad'. If my chocolate is made from a combination of yeast-grown chocolate flavour, yeast-grown milk substitute, sugar and soya and it still tastes exactly like chocolate, then how is this a bad thing? We're entering a new era of biotechnology, one that promises to remove a lot of the distinctions between 'real' and 'fake' food. And we'll be forced to do so by the very obvious fact that 'real' food is just too inefficient to grow in a world with 10 billion people.

 

The best part of this, however, is that by taking charge of the biotechnology of food in a big way, we get the option to remake food however we want. We could see a new era of heretofore unknown combinations of colour, flavour and texture; without many of the limits currently imposed by limited feedstock and processing capabilities.

[Tied]

[Donward]

Relevant:

http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/detail.aspx?chartId=53384&ref=collection&embed=True&widgetId=37373

 

Personally, my prediction is that things like 'obesity' are going to seem like a quaint obsession within the next 50-100 years.

We're headed for a world where every farmable centimetre of the planet is being farmed, and one where more and more ersatz ingredients are going to go into foods.

 

However, 'ersatz' doesn't mean 'bad'. If my chocolate is made from a combination of yeast-grown chocolate flavour, yeast-grown milk substitute, sugar and soya and it still tastes exactly like chocolate, then how is this a bad thing? We're entering a new era of biotechnology, one that promises to remove a lot of the distinctions between 'real' and 'fake' food. And we'll be forced to do so by the very obvious fact that 'real' food is just too inefficient to grow in a world with 10 billion people.

 

The best part of this, however, is that by taking charge of the biotechnology of food in a big way, we get the option to remake food however we want. We could see a new era of heretofore unknown combinations of colour, flavour and texture; without many of the limits currently imposed by limited feedstock and processing capabilities.

 

I disagree about every centimeter being farmed because it certainly isn't happening in this country (or where I live). More and more, farming in this country has been concentrated into a handful of corporate latifundia and concentrated. Whole swaths of productive land have gone fallow or are treated as nothing more than big back yards where someone might have a pet goat or a Shetland pony on it in the rural suburbs.

 

On the other hand, the death of the small farm thanks to the federal government's subsidizing of corporate agri-corporations on the other hand has also probably led to a good deal of the reforestation that you see in this country.

[Donward]

We usually make a point of being nice to the cannery employees where we deliver some of our fish. Traditionally fishermen would always make sure that the dock guys, mechanics, cooks etc were able to take home a box of fish or two for the winter. Those days are gone but we try to lookout for our friends nonetheless. One of our favorites is the welder who is Filipino and he really digs big Chinook or Sockeye heads which are used to make fish head soup. As white Americans, the notion of using the fish head for anything other than bait or dog food is foreign to our palates. But we always wanted to know what it tasted like.

So for dinner today, the new Filipono cooks offered fish head soup as one of the entrees. The missus and I finally had our chance to try it.

It was awful. Like a suicide pact we each took our spoons, dipped it into the broth, raised it to our lips and swallowed the fishy swill, blanched and said "Nope".

[Collimatrix]

Well, kudos for trying.

 

I would have thought it would be really rich and creamy 'cause of all the oil from the brains and whatnot.

[Donward]

It was fish oily. No duh, that's where most of the omega oils are. And the wonderful thing about salmon is that if it is fresh, salmon doesn't taste or smell "fishy". Particularly sockeye.

I might try it again with a different cook.