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I'm currently down with some kind of sinus issue, so I may be feeling more salty than I have any right to, but here I am up at 4 in the morning, and getting pressed about garlic. What am I talking about? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnZ_70XyVAk So I was watching these three Italian chefs get pressed (lol) about garlic going into carbonara. I understand the one argument of "authentic is bullshit, just make food that tastes good." In fact, it's one of the cornerstones of how I teach cooking: take what the recipe is, and adapt it to what you have on hand to make it work. I know of Indian mothers in the midwest who noticed that the oven is a rather handy tool to have, the crockpot is an easy way to long-stew meats, and that they don't have to do everything painstakingly by hand like their grandmothers did, so they buy a drat food processor. I've seen some odd versions of classic Indian dishes that could (and did!) quite cheerfully pass in a church potluck. I know we all make fun of the midwest, but there are plenty of people who just enjoy good tasting food, and I think we should let them live their best lives. I'm rambling. Point is, I'm not one to sit on a throne of authenticity and tell someone that you /must/ make a thing a certain way. However, I am a proponent of not everything goes in everything. There's a concept in South Indian food that you don't add like with like. So if I add yoghurt to something, adding ghee would be considered gross. If you watch the video, the Italian dudes were getting /really/ pressed when Babish made fresh pasta with eggs. "You can't do eggs on eggs!" It's the same with how I was taught to combine things. If you're buttering your bread for a sandwich, you don't put the cheese directly onto the buttered bread. You add a layer of sliced onion atop the buttered bread, and then you're good to go with the cheese. It's why, for the longest time, when I was still eating dairy, I'd order my grilled cheese with sliced tomato in the middle. Something about the buttered bread, and cheese in the middle just made me deeply uncomfortable. So when I see things like, "Oh, I like _________ with everything," I do tend to get a bit pressed. Butter does /not/ make everything better. There are times when you want to taste the thing as it is, and let it be that thing. If I've spent the past hour, perfectly toasting the spices, stewing the tomato, chopping the cilantro, grinding my spice mix, frying the whole spices, boiling daal, shelling, soaking, and separating out the tamarind pulp, crushing black pepper in the mortar and pestle, and crafting a lovely, fragrant, beautiful rasam, to be served over rice that's just this side of mushy, to be mixed with the rasam to make this creamy tasting lovely comforting dish, I'd want you to enjoy it as is. I'd be horrified if you decided that "butter makes everything better" and threw a lump of butter in there. If I made some slapdash version with lemon juice instead of fresh tamarind pulp (and not the first pressing, but the third), barely cooked tomato instead of properly stewed, curry leaves instead of cilantro, and a quick tarka with store bought spice blend? Go nuts. Throw on whatever you like. At that point, it's on par with ramen, and nobody cares. The point is, no, you shouldn't add garlic to all the things. No, you shouldn't add Sriracha to everything. Sometimes, it's OK to let a food be what it is, and balance it out with the other things you're eating. There's been this constant thing about "just triple the garlic". And I get it. A lot of recipes are written with a homeopathic amount of spices that one adds from the jar you've had since the Nixon era. But sometimes, a recipe calls for one clove of garlic, because you're not meant to be bludgeoned over the head with garlic. The garlic is not meant to be the focus. AND I LIKE GARLIC! I will frequently add it in two stages. First to the oil, so I get that toasty, roasty garlic taste. Then, midway through cooking, I'll add a bit (and I really do mean a bit; we're talking maybe a half clove or so) of raw chopped garlic, so I get that sharp, pungent taste. The combination of the two harmonises nicely, in my opinion. But there are many many dishes to which garlic doesn't quite "go", if that makes sense. I was chatting with a friend about making a green beans dish we make in South India. It's finely chopped green beans (you cut them into circles, not long pieces), mustard seed, urad daal, asafoetida, and coconut (optional). I like to use peanut oil, but my sister-in-law prefers the taste of sesame oil. My mother and aunt like to add dried red chilies to the tarka, but they like things on the spicier side. My sister-in-law will add whole dried red chilies to the tarka, but that's because my brother also likes really spicy, and he enjoys eating the fried red chilie with the rest of his meal. But basically, that's the long and short of that dish. The green beans are such a pain in the rear end to prepare (topping and tailing them, then painstakingly chopping those fuckers crosswise, and evenly becomes a chore not relished by many) that the dish itself comes together in zero time. You heat the oil in a skillet, and do a bog standard tarka. Mustard seeds in, they pop. Add urad daal. Add the asafoetida. Add green beans. Stir. Salt lightly. While that's going, nuke a bit of frozen coconut (basically every Indian housewife buys frozen grated coconut because nobody ever uses a full one anymore). When the green beans are done cooking 2 minutes later, add the coconut. My sister-in-law and mother both like their green beans cooked until soft, so they go for like 5 minutes rather than my 2. But the point is, once you've done all that, you're pretty much set. My friend asked me, "Yes, but what masalas do you put?" Typically, in North Indian food, a dish is enhanced by some kind of mixed spice. You lightly toast a few spices, and then grind it with ginger, garlic, onion, tomato, or any other various combinations, and add it to the frying onions. Or, you lightly toast some spices, grind them to a powder, and finish the dish with it. Or, you lightly toast some spices, crush them, and finish the dish. OR, you add some pre-ground spices to whatever's cooking on the stove. The point is, to a Northerner, they're waiting for that thing that finishes everything. Much like literally everyone in that video, they're waiting for "OK so when do I add the garlic?" And in the case of the green beans (and apparently the carbonara), you never add it.
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Mar 10, 2019 09:34
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 09:26 |
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I'm not eating a raw garlic. I'm not congested, just dripping. So I can breathe just fine, but have to blow my nose a lot. It hasn't been this bad since coke weekends. Cripes. @Coasterphreak: It is, as is onion. Thank gently caress for onion. There's a ton of TamBram stuff that doesn't call for it, and that's fine, but when a dish does call for it, I'm all in. In the suburban hellscapes that have the options of Walmart (which is the GOOD option) or some weird off the highway dodgy petrol station that has (for some reason) what looks to be a full on grocery store attached (and in one case, an Indian buffet; was the best Indian food I'd ever had outside of India. Was some mom and pop couple that owned, ran, and lived in that place.), I can generally get onion. "But if you want like that fancy green onions we'll have to go to Walmart. Isn't it just garnish anyway? I don't mind if it's not pretty."  And if it's /a/ grocery store (and not connected to the petrol station), they'll generally have some sort of seasoning that you can use. I used to think you can't overdo onion. Whooof. I don't know what I was thinking, but those potatoes were Not. Good. @Whalley: We did this with mashed potatoes. I was with a "more is more" type friend. Everything was sorted. They were fluffy, and creamy, and ever so good. I already had some stamppot greens in the fridge for leftovers breakfast. "Hey Dino how much garlic do you add?" "As much as you like." "OK." That was Not. Good.
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Mar 10, 2019 15:35
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I went to Minneapolis and had some of the most imaginative, delicious vegan food I’ve had. And I’ve taken vegan food trips to Toronto, New York, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Montreal, and many more that I’ve lost count of. Lockport, IL has a raw vegan place that does out of this world food, and I hate eating raw. Honestly, the flyover states would never be a choice for me to live in, but I’m more than happy to eat there. Heck, even that Texas caviar that shows up at literally every summer potluck is vegan and soooo good. I’ve had versions with black eyed peas, black beans, bell peppers of various types rather than tomato, and loved all of them.
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Mar 11, 2019 00:53
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Coasterphreak posted:I once put an entire head of garlic into a bowl of mashed potatoes. Good lord. Threw it out, or made soup?
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Mar 11, 2019 19:40
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ShortyMR.CAT posted:I put entire cloves into pasta I make for the family. I also use way to much hotsauce and chilis when I cook. I'll either reek of garlic or I'm covered in snot running down my face because I'm an idiot and dumped a bottle of El Yucka sauce in some rice. My taste buds are hosed. Eeek. The family doesn’t complain do they?
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Mar 12, 2019 16:09
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I'm not saying don't cook the way you want to! Please, by all means, do! This was the fevered postings of a seriously hosed up brain. But I do get the point that adding X to everything doesn't always work out. For years, I was very in that kitchen sink phase, where if it didn't have garlic, onion, ginger, curry leaf, turmeric, cumin, coriander, mustard seed, and asafoetida, it was a fail of a recipe. But then I saw that the dishes were starting to taste very same-y. If you're doing one thing and that's the whole dish? Throw the kitchen sink at it. It's mostly for those meals where you have multiple dishes, where the contrast is nice to have. If I just got done making a lemon rice, I'm not going to serve it with a salad that's heavy in lemon. It'd start heading into taste fatigue territory.
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Mar 13, 2019 03:43
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 09:26 |
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What got me to this point was my big brother. I love him with all my heart, but dear god that man does not know when to stop. There is no such thing as "this is enough". If he's gonna eat something he's enjoying, he's going to overeat that thing he's enjoying. To the point of he's in physical pain afterwards, because he ate entirely too much of it. The same goes for the cooking. If he's gonna add spices to a thing, he's gonna add entirely too many, and in quantities where the spices are adding actual texture to the dish. Yes, the Indians use a lot of spices. But we don't like to overuse them. Some dishes call for one combination, and other dishes call for a different one. Overdo any of them, and you're looking at a disaster. Add too many of the wrong spices, and it's not going to taste like it should. This especially becomes a thing when you're aiming for South Indian food. Some dishes call for only two spices: mustard seed and urad daal. AND NOTHING MORE. Because the other dishes on the menu will have different spices. For example, the potatoes will be the mustard seed and urad daal. The pongal will be cumin seeds and asafoetida. The salad will have no spices at all, and some lime juice. The slow cooked veg will have fenugreek seed. Combine all those dishes together, and you've taken a walk around your masala dabba. But if you follow that "MORE GARLIC" nonsense, you'd have added every spice to every dish, and now everything tastes the same. What's the point?
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Mar 16, 2019 12:46
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