Save_Ferris
Admiring Myself
Fire away.
Ask a Foodie
- Thread starter Save_Ferris
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Save_Ferris
Admiring Myself
1. Our king is James Beard and our queen is Julia Child.
2. Skwink, those questions are Perf's job.
Quackers
The Frog
What are your qualifications which means you can call yourself a foodie with confidance?
...and what have you done/eaten which makes you think your an expert on food and can answer questions about it?
...and what have you done/eaten which makes you think your an expert on food and can answer questions about it?
Save_Ferris
Admiring Myself
I fit this criteria and have had much experience with cooking. I know how and make sure to buy the best ingredients for recipes.
Maniacal
the green Napoleon
What are your favourite types of food to cook (rather than eat, and vice versa)? What types of food really excite your passion the most (both cooking and eating)? How often do you cook rather than eat out?
_random_
Jewel Runner
How do you convince people who like their steak medium-well or well-done that they're being stupid?
Save_Ferris
Admiring Myself
Although French is not one of my favorite cuisine's, I love cooking it for its various techniques that in turn help me around the kitchen in general. On the other hand, I love eating Japanese but cannot find the right ingredients (where do I find real wasabi?) and am still pretty poor at rolling sushi.
Italian for both. Great for cooking on a rainy day and amazing comfort food.
I don't eat out often, it's something Americans need to do less of so they can go to better restaurants when they do.
Not yet, but I do want to improve my grilling this year and am good with most other cuts.
Ah, I was once the same way. Ask them to try a good steak medium-rare. You can't tell them about the flavor, they have to taste it themselves.
If they still don't like it, then you need to realize that some people just don't like some foods. I haven't gotten myself to like sweet potatoes, for example.
Narz
keeping it real
It's one thing to kill an innocent animals but when you burn the crap out of it rendering it near tasteless it's even sadder.
Back in my cow chomping days I ordered a burger at a diner in New Jersey and when I asked for it rare the waiter told me they only served their meat well done by state mandate. Yet another strike against New Jersey.
Save_Ferris, can you give us a typical week's menu?
Perfection
The Great Head.
Which is better, Maruchan or Nissin?
What makes a Big N' Tasty so big and tasty?
What would you do for a Klondike bar?
Can you believe it's not butter?
What makes a Big N' Tasty so big and tasty?
What would you do for a Klondike bar?
Can you believe it's not butter?
warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
So.. foodie = fattie ?
Narz
keeping it real
Not all fat people are interested in food & some skinny people are obsessed with it. I speak from personal experience with humans & food.
Save_Ferris
Admiring Myself
I find instant noodles to be too salty.
Is this a midwestern thing?
Not much for mediocre ice cream in mediocre chocolate.
Yes. And it tastes disgusting.
I'll have to think about that. Usually I just make what I feel like, or experiment with the ingredients I have (ever seen Chopped?)
Narz
keeping it real
Ok, well what ingredients do you usually have on hand?
You must think about your weekly food plans when you go food shopping.
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If a place refuses to serve their burgers less than well done, perhaps you don't actually want their burgers less than well done after all.
Have you tried adding only half the flavor packet for a less salty experience?
What is your preferred country of origin for clementines?
What food do you most want to try that you haven't yet?
What is your opinion on durians?
Narz
keeping it real
Fixed that for you.
OMG, durians are so good!
One of these days (maybe next summer) I'm gonna make a youtube video of this professional durian chopper upper & bagger in Chinatown (NY), he's got skillz. 
I've never quite agreed with all the rage that some foodies get into over the way other people prefer their food. If someone really prefers their food a certain way, who am I to tell them they are wrong? All I can tell them is that pretty much all beef is going to taste the same once it is well-done, so they might as well not waste money on high quality cuts. This same argument basically applies to the people who get the very expensive pieces of sushi and slather them in the mock wasabi and soy sauce. If that's what you like I have no problem with it, but you might as well just order cucumber rolls.
Some other things that are supposedly faux pas are just silly. A big example of this is mixing seafood and cheese, which has somehow entered into the minds of a lot of foodies as something that should absolutely never be done, when as far as I can see its merely a cultural thing from Italy. Supposedly the strong taste of cheese will overpower most seafood, but if you go right next door to France, I can name more than a few dishes that mix seafood and cheese. Another one is that pasta should always be served "al dente" ("to the teeth", basically meaning it has a bit of a snap to it). As far as I can see, as long as your noodles are not complete mush (in which case they would probably breakup making the sauce they are in funky) this is merely another preference.
Quite the opposite in my opinion.
Excessively overweight people (at least in America) usually seem to get that way as a result of lots of snacking and eating fast food. Many people have a compulsion to constantly eat, not caring about the quality or the taste of the food.
Most "foodies" seem to appreciate food, so even if they eat something unhealthy (like a steak) they understand the concept of a balanced meal and will often pair it with something healthy (broccoli, asparagus, etc) rather than simply more fatty food. This isn't really out of a desire to be healthy, because a health nut and a foodie can be quite different, but rather more to do with the way flavors work. It is rare that a bunch of really unhealthy items really do go together better than a mixture of different things. There is one very general rule for both healthy meals and tasty meals: the more different food groups represented on your plate, the better the food probably is.
Also since good food tends to be more expensive, many of us young foodies simply couldn't afford to be fat if we wanted.
Food is probably the largest part of my budget because I tend to buy very high quality and expensive ingredients, but for this to work, I've had to pretty much entirely cut out casually eating out, snack foods such as chips and cookies and soda (none of which I miss). I tend to have three meals a day. Two very light meals, like a salad or just some some cheese and olives, and then one meal I put a decent amount of work into.
A lot of the gadgets that seem really cool end up being extremely frustrating space wasters. The best gadgets are ones with the most uses that are easy to clean and store. My favorite kitchen gadgets are my Kitchenaid stand mixer and ice cream maker, both of which I use all the time. However, if you don't plan to bake and make ice cream, there probably isn't much need for these as they are expensive, bulky and there is sort of a lot of parts to keep track of. Nonetheless, they are good quality products and you can do some truly amazing things with them.
For something simple that fulfills all the criteria of a good kitchen gadget (useful, easy to use, easy to clean, easy to store) my favorite recent purchase is simply a set of collapsible tupperware. A bit boring, but I also bought some empty spice jars and squirt bottles the other day. Buying your spices in bags as opposed to the jars is usually much cheaper but the trade off is they are difficult to store. With the empty jars I can move the spices directly from the bags to the jars as soon as I get them home. The squirt bottles are good so that if I make a salad dressing or a sauce to go with dinner, I can now keep it in the fridge to use as condiment to use on sandwiches or something. Asking for empty jars and bottles on a wedding registry would probably seem weird though.
In my opinion, every home should have at least one very high quality knife of either the Chef or Sentoku variety. If it's a good knife and you take good care of it (hand wash it, sharpen it right) it can last for ages.
Since there is so much crap out there, it might actually be easier to tell you what to avoid.
Electric knife sharpeners are evil. They work for a little bit but they also ruin knives. After 2-3 runs through one of these machines your blade will be dull as cardboard.
Fry daddies (countertop deep fat friers). These can be good, but more often than not they are crappy. They rarely get to the temperature they say they should (meaning longer frying times and thus greasier food) and they are a major pain to clean. If you want to deep fry, a much better investment is a dutch oven and an oil/candy thermometer as these at least have multiple uses. Actually asking for a high quality thermometer and a dutch oven are not bad choices if you think you'd use them.
Sandwich Presses. Again, these can be good but the problem is that they almost always have a very specific shape on the inside so if you have any sort of bread other than standard grocery store white bread things are going to be a mess. They also often stay hot way too long after cooking. This not only makes them dangerous, but it means the little lost bits of food are going burn to the inside and make cleaning into a hassle.
warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
Never heard the term "foodie" before, is this a recent thing?
