Learning to Cook: My Winter Break Experiences with Walter Staib

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The discussion centers around an individual's attempt to cook during winter break, specifically trying recipes from a European cookbook by Walter Staib. The dishes attempted include poached salmon, Brussels sprouts with bacon, and Macaire potatoes, accompanied by Sauvignon Blanc. While the results were not visually comparable to the cookbook photos, the cooking experience was deemed enjoyable. Participants express admiration for the effort and encourage further exploration in cooking, suggesting that practice improves presentation. The conversation shifts to the importance of good kitchen tools, like a Wüsthof chef's knife, and the value of creativity in cooking rather than strictly following recipes. There are mentions of baking bread and cooking techniques, with some sharing personal cooking experiences and recipes. The dialogue highlights the challenges and rewards of cooking, emphasizing that experimentation and learning from mistakes are key to developing culinary skills.
  • #31
Danger said:
As well you should; it must be stabbed, shot, hung, or whatever it takes to kill it once and for all.

I made bread when I was 7 or 8. Wouldn't mind taking another go at it, but it's so cheap to buy that I don't have an incentive.

And I repeat here my recipe for the perfect meal: chainsaw-cow--fire is optional.

:smile:

My incentive for baking is not being able to find decent bread around here. I never needed to bake when I lived in NJ...that's what bakeries were for!

I located several recipes for rye bread. This is going to have to wait until I order more flour. It seems all the recipes concur that I need to get something called first clear flour, and if I had a hard enough time finding rye flour at the stores, I know I'm not finding that here...so I just ordered some online and will have to put my bread baking on hold until it arrives. I guess I can begin work on the starter. This is going to take some committment if I want to make rye bread right. It's about a 3 day process to make the whole thing, so I need to plan ahead on this.
 
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  • #32
Moonbear said:
Now that I've located rye flour, I'll be giving rye bread a stab.

Swedish limpa bread is wonderful. I more-or-less follow James Beard's recipe in "Beard on Bread". It takes a long time to make. The results are worth it.
 
  • #33
D H said:
Swedish limpa bread is wonderful. I more-or-less follow James Beard's recipe in "Beard on Bread". It takes a long time to make. The results are worth it.

I might try that at some point (I have a recipe for that in one of my cookbooks), but that's not what I'm craving. I'm craving New York Jewish rye bread. It's the stuff where you actually have to make a bad batch first, just so you have day-old bread to make a good batch.
 
  • #34
I always used to do the next best thing...buy homemade bread for dirt cheap. Just go over to the hutterite colony and buy whole wheat, white, rye bread for hardly anything.
 
  • #35
what's a hutterite colony?
 
  • #36
deerhake.11 said:
did someone say bread??

http://www.wowway.com/~deerhake.11/roll.jpg
i love a good roll. just made them today.. may not look pretty, but i don't cook for display purposes :biggrin:
Those look delicious! Are they yeast rolls?
 
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  • #38
scorpa said:
where all the hutterites live :confused:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutterites

Interesting. I had never heard of these people. But then, I don't get out much. Maybe I should become a Hutterite.
 
  • #39
Math Is Hard said:
what's a hutterite colony?

:smile: Somehow calling them a colony makes me think of bees or ants. I'm probably the only one who finds this funny.
 
  • #40
Moonbear said:
:smile: Somehow calling them a colony makes me think of bees or ants. I'm probably the only one who finds this funny.

I got the visual. :smile:

Thr first thing I thought of was "The Swiss Colony" http://www.swisscolony.com
and I thought maybe Scorpa was talking about something like a Hickory Farms-type store.
 
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  • #41
Math Is Hard said:
Interesting. I had never heard of these people. But then, I don't get out much. Maybe I should become a Hutterite.

Haha trust me you shouldn't. The wiki article gives the basic idea, but there is a bit of misinformation and left out info to. It seems like most people outside of rural areas have no idea what Hutterites are so don't feel bad :)
 
  • #42
Evo said:
Those look delicious! Are they yeast rolls?

yup. my mom's recipe... I had to learn how to cook them since i moved to college. I was going through withdrawal :smile:
 
  • #43
deerhake.11 said:
yup. my mom's recipe... I had to learn how to cook them since i moved to college. I was going through withdrawal :smile:
Wow, I'm impressed! Yeast dough isn't a simple undertaking. But it can't be beat. :approve:
 
  • #44
yeah I know.. I am 2 for 2 so far, but I've definitely seen what happens when things go wrong. I've eaten some pretty flat rolls in my day =)

im slowly building up my cooking talents: any meat via a grill, anything out of a box, and now yeast rolls. :biggrin:
 
  • #45
deerhake.11 said:
yeah I know.. I am 2 for 2 so far, but I've definitely seen what happens when things go wrong. I've eaten some pretty flat rolls in my day =)

im slowly building up my cooking talents: any meat via a grill, anything out of a box, and now yeast rolls. :biggrin:
Go for it! When I left for college, I couldn't afford to eat on campus, nor was the food there very good. I cooked the food my mother had made all my life - baked beans, lentil soup, "French" soup (rice, potato, and onion soup with a tomato base), yeast rolls, breads, biscuits, spaghetti sauces, tuna/salmon casseroles, etc. If you can't eat well without relying on others, you have limited independence, and if you can't eat (well or not) without relying on restaurants, food services, and delis, you are lost. My freshman year, I was required to live on campus, and I suffered. Afterward, I had a modest apartment and I shopped and cooked for myself, and ate very well. I got lazy at times and cooked "batch foods" like spaghetti or baked beans that would provide lots of left-overs, but I usually cooked something every day. I baked a couple of loaves of whole-wheat bread every week, and kept stocked up on lettuce, mayonnaise, cheese, tomatoes, etc, so I could take decent sandwiches for lunch.
 
  • #46
There's one really good bread that I forgot about until pigging out on some last night. The niece sent over some Indian stew and bannock. There are definitely advantages to marrying into a Cree family. :-p
 
  • #47
Ha, today I tried this sauce from Grodon Ramsey

http://youtube.com/watch?v=LpQwZnjtnpc

It tasted damn good!

I don't have creme fresh, so I used half heavy cream and half sour cream, and followed the rest from the video. Tasted f***in great!

(I used snow crabs instead of king crabs, because I like snow crabs better)
 
  • #48
hmmm...you've just learned how to make sause?
Come on!Make me some kebab, boy! :devil:
 
  • #49
Boy, it sure is nice to buy almost made stuff from the store. I just fried the sausage, then added some sour krout in the pan after it was done to heat it up (is that safe?), I boiled some pasta that had sauce already with it, and made salad dressing for the salad that comes in a bag. It all took about 20 mins to make.

http://img503.imageshack.us/img503/5048/pict0340la4.jpg
 
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  • #50
Looks great Cyrus! Moonbear posted a great saurkraut recipe some time ago in the food thread.

You can eat saurkraut right out of the bag/jar/can without further cooking.
 
  • #51
I really like the English custom of having mustard on sausage.

One German dish I have enjoyed at restaurants is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rouladen" .
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  • #52
Evo said:
You can eat saurkraut right out of the bag/jar/can without further cooking.


:smile: That's good to know......:shy:

Is it ok to put it in the same pan that I cooked the sausage with? I know your not supposed to touch things that have touched raw chicken.
 
  • #53
'Kraut is preserved by brining. It's essentially shredded cabbage packed in salt, so it's fine to eat as-bought. Ain't nothin' bad going to grow in an environment with that much salt in it.

Still, you've got to learn to cook some stuff, Cy! Buying stuff and frying it or warming it up is very expensive and it gets old after a short time. Get some salt pork (or even better, a meaty bone from a ham-hock) and boil it with lentils, onions, celery, and some pepper and a little salt (not necessary if you use either salt pork or really salty ham) and see what you think. Carrots are very inexpensive and they keep well in the fridge, and they are also a nice addition to lentil soup.
 
  • #54
turbo-1 said:
'Kraut is preserved by brining. It's essentially shredded cabbage packed in salt, so it's fine to eat as-bought. Ain't nothin' bad going to grow in an environment with that much salt in it.

Still, you've got to learn to cook some stuff, Cy! Buying stuff and frying it or warming it up is very expensive and it gets old after a short time. Get some salt pork (or even better, a meaty bone from a ham-hock) and boil it with lentils, onions, celery, and some pepper and a little salt (not necessary if you use either salt pork or really salty ham) and see what you think. Carrots are very inexpensive and they keep well in the fridge, and they are also a nice addition to lentil soup.

You're telling me. The grocery bill was 100 bucks for this and some other stuff. Yikes.
 
  • #55
Cyrus said:
You're telling me. The grocery bill was 100 bucks for this and some other stuff. Yikes.
When I was in college, I ate a LOT of lentils, peas, beans, rice, etc. You can make some very tasty stuff for cheap, but you've got to get beyond the "heat and eat" model and get creative. You MUST have oregano, basil, some decent curry powder, and onion and garlic (in one form or another - dried or fresh) to have any hope of success, but the results can thrill you when you get it right.

I'd love to start a cooking school. My sensitivities to fragrance chemicals prevent that (can't be around the general public most of the time) but I think it would be a hit. I never cook from recipes (the big money-maker for TV cooks that can't cook) - just go in commando-style and work with what I've got. Last Sunday, my wife tried to follow a family recipe for French Soup (rice-and-potato soup with canned tomatoes and frozen/salted leeks, though she also added garlic scapes) and it came out crappy. Better than most restaurant fare or any canned soup, but still not up to par. The next day, I got some ground turkey out of the freezer, and we sauteed that with some Bell's poultry seasoning and some onions and mushrooms and added that to the soup. Ding, ding, ding!
 
  • #56
Cyrus said:
:smile: That's good to know......:shy:

Is it ok to put it in the same pan that I cooked the sausage with? I know your not supposed to touch things that have touched raw chicken.
Chicken sausage? Sure, once it's been cooked, no problem. Usually the meat is cooked with the saukraut, but I like the idea of cooking them separately also. My mother cooked spareribs with saurkraut at least twice a month.

Alton Brown showed how to mkae homemeade saurkraut, but with my luck, I am not attempting it.

Turbo, I would think Cyrus could probably teach us both about lentils.
 
  • #57
Evo said:
Chicken sausage? Sure, once it's been cooked, no problem. Usually the meat is cooked with the saukraut, but I like the idea of cooking them separately also. My mother cooked spareribs with saurkraut at least twice a month.

Alton Brown showed how to mkae homemeade saurkraut, but with my luck, I am not attempting it.

Turbo, I would think Cyrus could probably teach us both about lentils.

No its pork sausage. But I know if you cook raw chicken, you're not supposed to let anything come into contact with the raw chicken or you can get sick.

So I got a cast iron frying pan. I put the sausage in it. Then I dumped the sauerkraut into it and cooked them both at once. Can I do that?
 
  • #58
Evo said:
Turbo, I would think Cyrus could probably teach us both about lentils.
Maybe so. I lived within walking distance of a supermarket that was part of a very large regional franchise, and they had stuff like lentils that might have sold well in Boston, NY, etc but were dirt-cheap up here. Dirt-cheap > in my diet during college as long as it was healthy. I made casseroles with a base of lentils - once they soaked up water and got bulky they were better than pasta ($/yield) in lots of dishes. I'd boil them with garlic and onion, drain them, and combine them with other vegetables and herbs with a *thin* topping of stinky cheese to make a baked vegetable loaf. Slice like meatloaf, and serve with a tipping of tomato sauce with basil.

I was a skinny student, but I was not ill-fed.
 
  • #59
Vegetarian love song: ♪ Teach me 'bout lentils, baaaaaaby... ♫
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  • #60
Cyrus said:
No its pork sausage. But I know if you cook raw chicken, you're not supposed to let anything come into contact with the raw chicken or you can get sick.

So I got a cast iron frying pan. I put the sausage in it. Then I dumped the sauerkraut into it and cooked them both at once. Can I do that?
You can do that, Cy. The best bet is to get some salt pork and sear that in the pan to release fats, then brown the sausage in those fats, then reduce the heat and dump in the 'kraut to heat it.