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Food Thread: An Unexamined Food Is Not Worth Eating*

I make hummus all of the time, because it's really easy, tastes great, and is a great appetizer to plop down on the table with drinks. But for the longest time I made the baseless assumption that it needed lots of olive oil to taste good. Now, adding fat to a dish is rarely a bad thing, but olive oil is a strong-flavored fat, and there is a fair amount of variation in it, especially the extra-virgin varieties. So making hummus was always an exercise in tasting and adding and wondering what it needed.

But one day, long past the time that one would have expected me to have figured this out, I thought, "Hmmm...Dildo...maybe use much less olive oil and see what happens." My first fear was that it would be too thin, because the olive oil emulsifies wonderfully with the other stuff. But then I realized that tahini (sesame paste) has lots of fat, and off I went!

And there was much rejoicing at Chez Dildo, because the hummus was great! And easier, because I didn't have to drain the chick peas and carefully dole out the liquid to arrive at the correct consistency. I just dumped the whole can in and the rest of the ingredients, then drizzled a bit of olive oil in for flavor.

The moral of the story is that preconceived notions can be tough to change, or never get involved in a land war in Asia. Maybe both.

Anyway, it is possible to teach old dogs new tricks in the kitchen.

*With apologies to Plato

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While this seems to be a sad story, I am suspicious of someone who buys five-pound bags of poppy seeds with which to make tea.
Unwashed poppy seeds under fire on Capitol Hill and around the world

A man who has been seeking changes to U.S. law since his son died from morphine intoxication in 2016 expects to see bills filed in April. His son wasn't using drugs. It was unwashed poppy seeds, bought on Amazon.com and brewed as tea, that killed him.

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Many thanks to commenter "naturalfake" for the very interesting cocktail essay and the accompanying recipes. But you people were way too polite with him.

Shaking a Manhattan? Sacrilege! I have experimented with both and I think the stirred version is much better. Bourbon (or Rye) just doesn't taste right when it is frothy.

As for the Rose's Lime Juice? I will not cast aspersions on his choice of "sour," other than to say that his mother was a hamster and his father smelled of elderberries!

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Two recipes from the always-reliable Garden&Gun. I like them because the recipes are almost always something I want to eat, and they keep the preaching to an absolute minimum.

Scones with potato and cheddar? Sure...why not? I'll try anything once, and as most of you know I always tend toward the savory side of things.
St. Patrick’s Day Scones: A Southern baker’s Irish breakfast

Bloody Marys, when made well, are a pleasure to drink, and eat! I have tried the Bloody Mary bar at Atchafalaya in New Orleans, and I heartily approve. So their twist...using tomatillos...sounds like a good thing. By the way, I am not a fan of thick tomato juice in Bloody Marys, and the tomatillos sound like they would be the perfect consistency.
Tomatillo Bloody Mary

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From a globetrotting Moronette comes a deeply disturbing and rather disgusting image. Now...I don't like milk to begin with, and bananas are the Devil's work, but combining them seems over the top, even for the Brits.

What the hell do you do with this stuff? pour it over cereal? Drink it straight (shudder)? Use it as some perverse hair tonic?

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It's real. Seriously.

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One of my go-to dishes when I am at a loss for anything interesting is a simple spatchcocked roast chicken with a spice rub or, during the summer a cilantro-based marinade. I am lucky to live just a few minutes from an excellent poultry farm, so getting great chicken is not a problem. And my default 425° on convection works just fine, so I really don’t have to think much about the cooking process. I put a temperature probe into the thickest part of the breast and set the alarm for 160° and wander off to have a cocktail. Cooking doesn't get much easier than that. But that final temperature? Where did that come from, other than those nasty preconceived notions and outdated USDA recommendations? Well, guess what? 155° works better.

Joe Bob says, "Check it out!"

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Food and cooking tips, triple-cream cheeses, young wild pigs, Venison Steak and Eggs (Swiped from Garrett), thick and fluffy pita and good tomatoes that aren't square, pale pink and covered with Mestizo E.coli: cbd dot aoshq at gmail dot com. Any advocacy of French Toast with syrup will result in disciplinary action up to and including being nuked from orbit.