Um, I think I detect a security breach?
Security? Alameida commented over at Brad's. I don't know who you're thinking about.
I don't know what DeLong is talking about -- the sugar thing is totally above-board. It's how bartenders "fix" drinks. It's how steakhouses get that nice carmelization on the meat.
Not an inlaw, if I have the relationships worked out right. Would inlaws be googling a step-grandmother on the other side of the family?
Yep. Restaurants do. Not just sugar, but butter: "a stick of butter in every dish," is what I've heard...
But here in Berkeley we don't "tart dishes up with refined sugar," we "sex-worker them up with organic thistle honey"...
Life in Codewordistan is polysyllabic.
Polysyllabicer, that is.
I must actually try the sugar thing -- I'd heard it before, but had always resisted it. I've had literally sweet, as in, really sugary, tomato sauce before, and it's disgusting, but I figure that can't be what Alameida is talking about.
Just as in breakfast cereals, store bought tomatoey sauces have only two flavors available - salty or sweet.
Salt-free ketchup has a nice sweet taste that I like. Salt- free canned corn is nicely sweetened, either in the cannery or by nature.
Oh, and as long as we are straying over into the dark side - combining grape jelly with equal portions of any barbecue sauce makes a great dip for meatballs.
I've heard it before, from people who weren't otherwise insane, but haven't tried it.
And why would you be dipping meatballs?
On little toothpicks, as appetizers.
Anthony Bourdain calls butter the "dirty little secret" of every major chef.
You know, I think this may be part of what keeps people from cooking. No one feels weird about eating packaged or restaurant fatty food, because that's how it comes -- you eat chips, and chips have buckets of fat in them, and only a neurotic would worry about it. Cooking for themselves, though, people have a nasty tendency to skimp on the butter, and cream, and olive oil, and lard, and crispy skin on the chicken, and everything else yummy, because if they can control everything, why not be healthy? And then the food they make tastes filthy, and they go back to eating chips, which aren't any healthier, but aren't their responsibility.
I would suggest that anyone who wants to cook more should put the idea of making an effort to cook healthily out of their minds until they've got the hang of making food that tastes good. Then they can work on finding yummy stuff that isn't too rich. But when you're learning? Rich is vital.
In termayter sauce, a tiny bit of sugar helps cut the acidity of the tomatoes and in so doing allows the rest of the sauce's flavor profile to emerge. The proverbial half teaspoon is probably sufficient, as it will be below the threshold of what people can taste but will be enough to counter overly aggressive acidity. This is doubly important if you fortify your sauce with some red wine like all good paisanos should.
If the sugar trick isn't for you, a little grated carrot added to the aromatics at the beginning will do the same thing, since carrots have more sugar in them than any other vegetable except delicious, delicious beets. If you look at traditional ragu recipes, with or without tomatoes, they almost always include some carrot both for their ability to round out the flavor of a dish and for the sugar they contribute.
Good ragu also contains salt pork, pancetta or fatback, lots of butter, and cream as well, by the way. And that's neither dirty nor secret, just incredibly delicious.
Good ragu also contains salt pork, pancetta or fatback, lots of butter, and cream as well, by the way.
See!! My point exactly.
Tripp, that sounds revolting.
My grandmother in Alabama makes meatballs that way. It's surprisingly good.
With malice toward none, I'd like to quietly say that the new recipe-themed Unfogged leaves some still hungry.
Re 19: I think that I might agree about the fat, except that I strongly disagree about the appropriateness of using lard. It's full of the worst kinds of fats--the partially hydrogenated. I think it's got some trans-fatty acids in there too. Butter is much better than margarine, btw.
It's full of the worst kinds of fats--the partially hydrogenated.
Are you sure about that? Lard is straight animal fat, which is saturated, but not, I thought, partially hydrogenated. Isn't partial hydrogenation the result of a process that turns liquid vegetable oils into solid fats, rather than a characteristic of naturally solid fats? I must google now to defend lard's honor.
This wikipedia article supports the 'trans fat=partially hydrogenated vegetable oil' thesis, but doesn't explicitly exonerate lard. I will look further.
See also this article touting lard as a healthier alternative to trans-fat laden vegetable shortening.
Don't insult my lard, man. I need my lard. Can't fry things properly without lard. Can't make good pie crust without lard. Don't take my lard away.
</slinks off, clutching a box of lard>
A half-teaspoon of sugar in the boiling water can turn a decent ear of corn into a great ear of corn. A little sugar in a tomato sauce just helps bring out the tomato flavor but cuts the acidity.
Not trying to make either of them sweet, per se, as much as it is bringing out the flavors.
Okay, I mixed up the partially hydrogenated. Maybe I was thinking of Crisco. My godmother's husband works at a school of public health in biophysics, and one day he came home and said "no more crisco in the pie crusts." Butter works pretty well.
Lard! Lard! Lard!
Potato chips fried in lard are several orders of magnitude better than those fried in vegetable oil. Bursting with porky goodness.
We add milk and sugar to our boiling water for corn.
Didn't mean to get all up in your face about the lard -- I just depend on it for pastry. I can't manage butter pie crusts for some reason; while I know some people make them work fine, I never got the knack.
My understanding is that saturated fat is fat that has as many hydrogen atoms stuck to it as possible. Unsaturated fat has one or more carbon-carbon double bonds. The process of hydrogenation converts those to single bonds by sticking on hydrogen. The results are fats that are solid at room temperature -- which helps impart moisture to baked goods, and gives the fat a much longer shelf life.
Partial hydrogenation basically takes an unsaturated fat (one or more double bonds) and pushes it some, but not all, of the way toward saturation. Saturated fats like those in butter and lard are definitely not good for you, but it doesn't necessarily follow that there's a continuous relationship between healthiness and hydrogen content, with unsaturated being healthiest, trans fat the next, then saturated. I think trans fats are the worst of the three, for reasons I don't really understand. But saturated is bad, too.
Wow. In two paragraphs I've conveyed just about everything I remember from organic chemistry. You'd think it'd take a little longer to recount two semester's worth of my life.
I add a little butter to water when I'm steaming vegetables. Steamed butter is in fact free of dangerous trans fats.
I think we're missing DeLong's point. Which is that according to extra-crunchy NoCalians, white sugar is the work of the devil. Tchah! Refined sugar! Get thee behind me! Etc.
It's not that it's declassé, it's that it's wicked. And not in that New England way, either. I think. w-lfs-n, aren't you a crunchy NoCalian now? Tell us.
Lard is teh roxxor.
Oh, and you need more than a teaspoon of sugar in marinara. At least if you make as much as I do. I go with about 1/4 cup less 1 tablespoon, and don't knock my marinara. That amount of sugar balances perfectly with the amount of acid, salt, and peppers I put in.
pffff to all the health neuroticisim. A little butter and lard never hurt anybody.
leaf lard, from the belly region of the pig, is supposed to be the best for baking, but I can never find lard labeled by type.
I think you need to go to a butcher for leaf lard (which actually surrounds the kidneys). The stuff in the cardboard box is just random abdominal fat.
Some "NoCalians" - I won't name any names here - don't pay much attention to these issues because their usual recipes bear a striking resemblance to the one Weiner used last night.
which actually surrounds the kidneys
I remember reading that now. I couldn't find the reference in a quick flip through me cookbooks, and had to use what I found on the internets. (Oh internets! How you mislead!) Really, thanks for the info. This isn't the first time I've tried to remember that particular lard tidbit.
Consider me your source for all things hog-fat related. Mmmmm. Hog fat.
A little butter and lard never hurt anybody.
Lard kills. And sometimes butter can be responsible for the destruction of entire planets.
Isn't dark chocolate good for your heart?
And here's something I want, which may gross others out: chocolate covered gruyere. I already eat them together de temps a temps, so why not make it easier?
I love dark chocolate and gruyère, but together? That's chocolate covered cheese, man!
That's chocolate covered cheese, man!
Chocolate Covered Cheeseman will face The Meatman Magic Matt Weiner in a no-holds-barred cage match for the Unfogged Middleweight Championship this Sunday Sunday Sunday! $29.95 buys you the whole seat but you'll only need the edge!
The formerly-almost-silent Almeida had been biding her time, waiting for the right moment to strike. When Ogged returned from his brief hiatus, he found all that the furniture had been moved, and his new office was a former broomcloset.
Could somebody w/ privileges please post something on Fitzmas. I need an unfogged light discussion of this.
Well, DeLong may be DeLusional about sugar's presence or absence in his sauces, but at least his snarkiness introduced me to you. I'm glad for the link.
See my note over at DeLong - Sephardic Jews put sugar in their tomato sauce, per Claudia Roden, who is an authority on Middle Eastern cuisine. In fact, the whole sweet & savory phenomenon is part of a long culinary tradition reaching back to 13th century Baghdad and earlier. You know, prunes and lamb, quince and lamb, raisins in rice pilaf, golden raisins with cauliflower and pine nuts (a Sicilian taste they inherited from the Arabs) etc. Prune tzimmes!
So there.
Fitzmas
Although most press accounts emphasized that Fitzgerald was likely to concentrate on attempts by Libby Rove and others to cover-up wrongdoing by means of perjury before the grand jury, lying to federal officials, conspiring to obstruct justice, etc. But federal law enforcement officials told this reporter that Fitzgerald was likely to charge the people indicted with violating Joe Wilson's civil rights, smearing his name in an attempt to destroy his ability to earn a living in Washington as a consultant.
The civil rights charge is said to include "the conspiracy was committed using U.S. government offices, buildings, personnel and funds," one federal law enforcement official said. Other charges could include possible violations of U.S. espionage laws, including the mishandling of U.S. classified information, these sources said. [...]
According to this reporter's sources, Fitzgerald approached the judge in charge of the case and asked that a new grand jury be empaneled. The old grand jury, which has been sitting for two years, will expire on October 28.
w-lfs-n, aren't you a crunchy NoCalian now? Tell us.
I use only turbinado or demerara sugar, except on those occasions when I use rehydrated cane juice for, eg, a Ti Punch.
Unless we can get Fitzgerald to guest post, I'm not sure what we could do with a guess post. It's mostly speculation. Though I suppose it's news that Scott McClellan did something other than refuse to comment.
Also, we have no more reason to belive a Fitzmas-themed post would stay on that T-pic than this food-themed post would avoid it.
I do wish something would just happen already. I've been assuming that no one wil get indicted and this, like everything else that could make me happy, will simply fade away, but even if that's what's going to happen, could he please get on with it. I'm on tenterhooks.
58: We need a Fitzmas post so we can talk about baseball.
The civil rights charge sounds kinda chickenshit to me. Or, I don't know, maybe it would be a good thing if concerted government smear campaigns turned out to be illegal. I'd love to see Ken Starr sign a rock-hockey contract for what he did to Julie Hiatt Steele. But it seems like a road we don't want to go down.
re:27
Here I stand, pan in hand
Wond'ring what to cook
Frying's hard without the lard
That they just done took
Diet clowns get me down
with their war on fat
I miss its sizzle, yeah, fo'shizzle
I can't cook like that
Hey! You've got to hide your lard away...
(I thought of using this N.Y. Dolls song but it doesn't give you much to work with.)
sign a rock-hockey contract
Dude, is that acquired Lubbock patois or have you a much harder background than the bunny slippers would lead us to believe?
We need a Fitzmas post so we can talk about baseball.
As you know, you'll get no argument from me.
I grew up in Berkeley. Went to church behind Chez Panisse. White sugar in sauces is fine. Probably the only place--besides cakes--I do use it.
How long has DeLong lived in Berkeley?
There's nothing you can buy that can't be fried.
Nothing you can eat that don't need meat.
Not something you'd eat straight but
You'll learn that pork fat is great.
It's greasy!
All you need is lard.
All you need is lard.
All you need is lard, lard.
Lard is all you need.
But you'll have to have them all pulled out after the Savoy truffle.
That's what he's saying. It's a dentist's song.
The lore of my people has it that there is no food that can't be improved by being deep-fried.
Mmmm, deep-fried whisky. (Getting the breading on is tricky, but once you've got that done, the rest is a snap.)
I believe the implicit subject of "being deep fried" was the people, not the food. That's where the whiskey comes in.
Make a batter. Put it around some smooth, heat-resistant objects. Deep fry to make a shell. Break off the batter at the top, and put in a layer of something which is relatively water-impermeable. Butter, say. Fill with whiskey. Top with a little bit more butter, seal with reserved batter. Deep fry again.
that's as may be, but a quick search reveals that in the same post you used the word "Hellman's" as a modifier to "mayonnaise"; what's the excuse for that?
One has to accept that yolk-and-oil mayonnaise and store-bought mayonnaise are simply two different substances, and that while the latter may have started out as an imitation of or substitute for the former, it need not be so regarded now, and what makes it blow when compared to the former may indeed be something good when considered with eyes unclouded by prejudice.
Consider the parallel case with Rose's lime: the fact that it was originally a sweetened substitute for lime juice, that was meant to last longer than actual lime juice, is no excuse for making a gimlet with real lime juice and sugar ("after all—that's what Rose's is trying to be anyway"); a gimlet is made with Rose's.
Unless you just think that Hellman's is crap jarred mayonnaise. I have no opinion on that.
obviously, homemade mayo is much better than store bought, but it's not very helpful to suggest in a quick meals item. not that it's actually that hard to make, but people are afraid of it. hellmann's is unquestionably the best bought mayo, though.
Homemade mayo is the bomb, but even the worst bought mayo is entirely better than Miracle Whip. That stuff give me a serious case of the jibblies.
2 slices wonder bread
Thin-sliced deli ham
Thick spreading of miracle whip
= Sandwich of the gods.
All other uses for Miracle Whip are crap, though.
Chopper,
Pretty good, but swap in some Spam for the ham and add some iceberg lettuce and you've got yourself a winner!
Healthy Schmealthy. I wants me salty fat.
hum perhaps I am being more of a pedant and a dick than is strictly necessary (Mrs Digest is allergic to eggs, so I haven't tasted the stuff in years) but I remember Hellmann's as being a palm-oil product which has the characteristic palm-oil characteristic of coating your tongue in an unpleasant way.
In most applications where mayonnaise is called for, I would use creme fraiche if I couldn't be bothered making it. It really is nicer.