You Might Be A Geek If…
Irradiated by LabRat
You receive a gift of a cookbook from a friend in a far-off country, and your first reaction isn’t “How thoughtful”, or “One-pot meals? That will save me time and cleanup”, but: “It’s UK-published! I wonder how many cultural differences there’ll be in here! Awesome!”
So far only Stingray’s only been able to shut off my endless stream of rhetorical questions to the room at large by calling tech support.
This should make for a good Cooking Noob opportunity, but I think I’m probably going to have to pick one that doesn’t contain the casual assumption that I can readily lay my hands on a neck of lamb, or that everybody can get Thai “chillis” but good old New World chiles do not exist in this reality.
Also, a recipe for “chilli con carne” that calls for, as its only concession to heat, a small amount of sweet chili sauce is just wrong.
October 16th, 2009 at 7:55 pm
Srsly? “A neck of lamb?”
In the benighted little town of Houston, I can find any part of a pig at the local grocery store. And I do mean ANY PART. Nina Tres and I had no end of fun when we found the pickled pig’s lips.
Pork neck bones: No problem. Ox tails: No problem. Turkey necks: Check. Chicken feet: (I kid you not) Right there in the meat department. Goat: Yep.
But for some reason, any particle of a sheep must be imported from Australia and cost 10.95 a pound.
October 16th, 2009 at 10:47 pm
Apparently, lamb neck is regarded in countries with more active shepherding cultures the way flank steak is here- cheap and tough but extremely tasty given a bit of knowledgeable handling. I had no idea, but I am intrigued and frustrated.
October 17th, 2009 at 6:47 am
We probably have one if we didn’t piece it out for stew- we have a ewe AND a lamb from our county this year, the mutton ewe free.
October 17th, 2009 at 9:53 am
Just about any part of lamb is good if cooked right. When I was growing up we ate lamb or mutton a couple of times a week. What I can’t seem to find around here is goat; roast kid is quite good.
October 17th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
I gather the average northern euro thinks he’s being daring if a dish has onion in it?
( the French allow it, but that onion will be thoroughly cooked first )
October 17th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
“Chile” vs. “chilli” is kinda like “Java” vs. “JavaScript”: they’re much different, but they happen to have some of the same letters in their names.
October 17th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
In my job I have the great pleasure of handling dozens of new books every day, including quite a few from Britain and Australia. The most fascinating books, hands down, are the British and Australian travel guides to the US. It’s really, really interesting to see your own country from the point of view of a foreigner who likes it.
October 17th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Kristopher- oh, there’s PLENTY of onion. And also, to my dismay, plenty of bell pepper- I’ve managed to condition myself out of my extreme hatred for them, but I definitely don’t add them for the flavor, either. What seems lacking is anything with real bite; there’s a more-than-visible amount of Middle Eastern and a bit of Thai influence, but it seems to have been defanged. The “Mexican” recipes are outright sidesplitting, though.
Elmo- I LOVE reading those too. I’m still looking for a Euro counterpart to Bill Bryson…
October 18th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Good Gh0d. I call it “The Uck” for more than just the cooking here, but also for the cooking.
The Forerunners setting up my potential new gig in NM have been speaking of “Hatch Chillis” and such. Oh my, oh my oh my. I am agog at the seasoning potentials of New Mexico. Want UK cooking? Find a lousy cut of beef. Boil the crap out of it. Serve with carrots boiled to the consistency of houmous. Yes, it’s as awful as it sounds.
*whimsy on* One of the fellows says they’ve invented “The Vulcan Bloody Mary” involving green chillies. Oh, why must I bide on this barren shore? *whimsy off*
October 18th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
Mark: “chillies” aside, Brit cooking has come a long way in the last 2o years- Marco White, Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall (who also does game) Heston Blumenthal, Gary Rhodes, and Fergus Henderson. The last three are more adventurous than many American chefs (Anthony Bourdain is a big fan and pal of Henderson). Check out his Nose to Tail Eating.
October 18th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
Mark: New Mexico is a chile culture all to its own; there’s a reason “red or green?” is, no kidding, the official state question. Also, when people say “chile”, they usually don’t mean the individual fruits; they mean the thick sauces made out of them that these people put on EVERYDAMNTHING. If you order a green chile cheeseburger, you won’t get a cheeseburger with sliced jalapeno rings; you’ll get one with a chunky pate of green chile. And you can even get the damn things at McDonald’s. If you don’t have a taste for it now, your options are pretty much either developing one or becoming the state’s pickiest eater.
As for “Hatch”, they’re one of the state’s two big centers for producing them; the other is Chimayo. In my personal opinion, Hatch makes better green ad Chimayo better red, but no one asked me.
Adding green chile to a Bloody Mary is something I had never contemplated, but… that actually could work kind of well.
October 18th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
Oh, you just had to mention Chimayo reds when I’m stuck in the cold north. I bought a couple of ristras, a few bags of dried chiles and a couple of pounds of powder in the Chimayo Valley the last time I drove through NM, too many years ago.
Gotta start planning a visit to the family members that I’ve got in ABQ.
October 18th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
Heh.
A friend has scandi parents … they did freak when he cooked them a dish with onion in it … thought it was horribly picante.
He does like lutefisk … which I find scary.
October 18th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
{Wandered on a digression through mail order sources of chiles, then half an hour in my old New Mexico cookbooks. Saliva production is a little high right now.}
Scandi parents? Heh…my mother makes the best enchiladas of any Norwegian you ever met.
When my parents were first married, they lived in El Paso, then in San Diego County and, a couple of years later, Albuquerque (where we lived until I finished kindergarten). She learned a lot from the neighbor ladies. The locals here where she grew up seem to think that that stuff is a bit warm for them (I now live on the old family farm in the midwest).
My grandmother used to have us all struggling to keep straight faces as she announced each year while serving the lutefisk, “Take a lot; it won’t be good tomorrow.” Most of us went for the meatballs instead. Mom still serves lutefisk at Christmas, though she knows her audience and only prepares small quantites. And you’ve inspired me to stock up on chiles, now that this season’s crop is ripe. World class stuff.
October 19th, 2009 at 7:28 am
I’ll bet I could give your mother some competition - but then, I’m only half Norwegian.
When I was a child family gatherings featured lutefisk, lefse, pickled herring, jello salads and little finger sandwiches made with baloney and Velveeta on white bread. Butter, no mayo.
The stunning blandness of most small town midwestern food means we eat a home a lot. There is one Mexican restaurant in our town, but they serve food a school lunch program would be ashamed to ladle out.
October 19th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
SmartDogs,
Yeah, I’m only half Norwegian, too. What time’s dinner?
October 19th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
In about 45 minutes - and we’re having this (except I’m using a pureed mix of corn, potatoes, milk, onion and garlic instead of cream and roasting and tossing in the last of the poor, pathetic poblanos that survived a Minnesota summer for a bit of heat). Bring a sixer of some good beer and we’ll pull a chair up for you ;0)
October 20th, 2009 at 1:40 am
I am being overly harsh of contemporary British cooking, but the formative years memories are strong.
As to adapting to a chile culture… I’m *really* looking forward to that!
October 20th, 2009 at 8:54 am
Wow-looks great, SmartDogs, and thanks for the invitation. I shouldn’t have logged off so soon. Maybe some time we can spend a weekend going back and forth saying, “Oh, yeah? Well, that was terrific, but wait’ll you taste this!” {chopchopchopstirstirstirsimmersimmersimmer…}
We can go out and shoot targets as each new batch is cooking.
November 7th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
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