« First-World Problems... | Main | Gun Thread: Mid-July Edition! »

Food Thread: Beauty (and flavor) Is In The Eye Of The Beholder

One the many kitchen skills I do not possess is the attention to detail required to make beautiful baked goods. I am in awe of people who can roll out dough and make perfect pie crusts, or decorate cakes, or navigate multiple ingredients and form them into delicious things. Hell...just coating things in chocolate is beyond my skills. I usually get chocolate on the ceiling and in my hair and shoes!

Sometimes form is paramount, as is demonstrated by marzipan, which is an awful and cruel thing to show a kid. Wow! It's looks great! But oh my God! It tastes like crap! Or wedding cakes, which usually look great and taste like nothing.

But often, beautiful execution is indicative of quality in other things. Not always, which is why I gaze with suspicion on perfect baked goods like in the photo. But...Your first taste is with your eyes (that's why my guests eat in the dark), so it really does matter.

So...here's the question: are desserts and baked goods made more beautifully if possible because of the inherent ease with which dough and sugar and chocolate can be manipulated, or is it because they are more one-dimensional in flavor and thus need that first pop of flavor from the beauty of it all?

******
It's easy to criticize the food industry for the well-publicized failures in food safety that crop up every month or so, but there are almost eight billion people on earth, and every one of them eats every day. That we don't have masses of people dying because of food-borne illness is a testament to the improvements in knowledge and technique and technology, all of which is driven by free-market economics. I'll bet that just like every human malady, there is more food-borne illness in socialist countries than in comparable free-market countries.

Barry Callebaut to restart Salmonella-hit plant

It sounds like they took the issue seriously, responded quickly, had plans in place to deal with the potential problem, and now the world can breathe a sigh of relief because the chocolate will once again flow!

******

There's a word in Yiddish that perfectly describes this photo: "bubbe-meise."
And cooking is filled with this sort of nonsense. My favorite is that one must sear meat so that the juices are sealed inside. But there are more....

******
Most of this sort of link is just clickbait, and I usually get irritated about 10% of the way and close the tab. But this one was actually pretty good!
Baking Tips Every Home Cook Should Know
Some of them are for people who actually have talent at baking and decorating (see first section of this thread), but most of them are good, solid bits of advice.
******
I like zucchini. And while its huge water content makes it problematic sometimes, it can be quite delicious. Especially with bacon!

Actually, I don't think I have ever cooked zucchini with bacon, but I think I will remedy that oversight this week.

However, commenter Bitter Clinger seems to have hit upon another way to cook it, one that might just work! I know, I know. he is really going out on a limb, frying it. Nobody likes fried foods!

One of my favorite lines in the LOTR movies is when Lady Galadriel says "The Quest stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little, and it will fail, to the ruin of all. Yet hope remains while the Company is true."

Such is my experience with growing zucchini in the garden. Take two days off of picking your vegetables and what was Monday's "not quite ready to pick" is Wednesday's "holy hell, that zucchini would make a horse blush" and all seems lost.

I think anyone that has grown it is familiar with this and every kid that had zucchini in the garden or a neighbor that did was forced to endure that one deadly summer of squash in which your mom tried to get you to eat zucchini in every abominable fashion available to the limited thinking 1970s and 1980s cookbooks.

Zucchini boats, zucchini casserole, baked zucchini, zucchini lasagna. I had it all in my youth, to the point where I developed Post Traumatic Squash Disorder which ruined me off of it for decades. But as a dog returns to its vomit, as an adult I can't help but think there is some redeeming culinary quality there and so the cycle of history repeats itself.

Wonder what cool ways the Horde has of dispatching oversized mutant zucchini? I included a picture of some of the ones that got away from me this year and some fried zucchini straws I made with a simple buttermilk soak, a dredge in seasoned flour and a shallow fry in my wok. Even the kid ate them.

******
This looks like something Misanthropic Humanitarian would eat (the man is a cabbage maniac), but it also looks pretty damned good!

How bad could it be? bacon, sour cream, cheese...and we're done. That's good enough for me. I also have a sneaking suspicion that I posted this before, but I am almost 29 and my memory isn't what it used to be.

Twice-Cooked Cabbage with Sour Cream and Bacon

One thing that irritates me about some cooking websites is the constant touting of branded ingredients so they can get a few cents from the Amazon purchase. This one is particularly irritating because they are linking to paprika. You know, the spice that has about 8,000 different producers. So what is special about this particular brand other than it is sold on Amazon?

Nothing..that's what. But the dish looks good, so try it, but don't buy that brand of paprika!

******

[Hat Tip: Weasel]
******
Just send me oysters. Lots of oysters, and I will provide special dispensation for those without taste who insist upon maple syrup with their French Toast. And pork rib roasts from the front end of the pig where all the good and fatty meat lives, carrots that don't taste like stalky chalk, spare bottles of Van Winkle Special Reserve 12 Year Old Bourbon, an herb garden that actually produces herbs (but no basil!), well-marbled NY strip steaks and elk backstrap to: cbd dot aoshq at gmail dot com.

And don't think that the rest of you are off the hook with maple syrup and French Toast: I'm still watching you! And I am watching you perverts who shake Manhattans and keeping a list for the Burning Times.