Learning to Cook: My Winter Break Experiences with Walter Staib

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around personal experiences with cooking during winter break, specifically focusing on attempts to prepare dishes from a European cookbook by Walter Staib. Participants share their culinary endeavors, challenges, and thoughts on cooking techniques and tools.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Technical explanation
  • Conceptual clarification
  • Debate/contested
  • Meta-discussion

Main Points Raised

  • One participant shares their experience trying to cook poached salmon, brussel sprouts, and macaire potatoes, expressing that the results did not match the cookbook's presentation.
  • Another participant admires the effort and suggests that presentation improves with practice.
  • Some participants discuss the distinction between cooking and baking, suggesting that baking may be more scientific.
  • Several participants comment on the importance of having good kitchen tools, particularly a high-quality chef's knife, and share their own experiences with knives.
  • One participant encourages creativity in cooking, suggesting that improvisation can lead to delicious meals beyond what cookbooks offer.
  • Another participant reflects on the challenges of finding specific ingredients, such as rye flour, for baking bread.
  • There is a humorous exchange about the size of knives and cooking skills, with some light-hearted teasing about cooking abilities.
  • Participants express encouragement and support for each other's cooking journeys, highlighting the learning process involved.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants generally agree on the value of trying new recipes and the importance of practice in cooking. However, there are multiple competing views on the best approach to cooking, with some advocating for strict adherence to recipes while others promote creativity and improvisation.

Contextual Notes

Some participants note the challenges of presentation in cooking and the subjective nature of taste and creativity in meal preparation. There are also references to personal experiences that may not be universally applicable.

Who May Find This Useful

Individuals interested in cooking, especially beginners looking for encouragement and tips on improving their culinary skills, as well as those interested in the creative aspects of meal preparation.

  • #91
turbo-1 said:
Cy, you've got to come to Maine. You can camp out in my garage, and I will teach you to cook actual meals made out of actual food. Opening cans and heating stuff up doesn't cut it! Today, I put a large roasting chicken in the oven around 1:30 at 450 deg. (F, for the smart-assed Euros who will make jokes) I put the bird in a large pan with about 1/2" of water in it, along with a large quartered yellow onion. I rubbed the bird with peanut oil, and dusted it with powdered sage, paprika, salt and black pepper. After about 45 min of browning, I tented the bird with aluminum foil and continued cooking at 350 deg F for another couple of hours. Add side dishes of steamed green beans, mashed potatoes made with fresh garlic and onion, and you've got a meal that is killer.

Secret: There is no secret. Good cooking is simplicity, a bit of planning, minimum prep, and a lot of waiting around (if you are roasting large critters). You can learn to cook - you just need motivation and some inventiveness.

Have chicken parts? Wet them in raw scrambled eggs, and roll them in crushed Panko bread crumbs with sage, pepper and salt added. Place the chicken parts in a roasting pan lubricated with peanut oil, garnish them with a bit of lemon zest (shredded peels) and drizzle a bit of lemon juice over them. Bake in a hot oven until done. One of the quickest, tastiest entrees you will ever taste.

BTW, all the juice from the roasting pan, and all the juice from the potato/garlic/onion mash-up, and from the steamed beans is now in a large revere-ware pot along with all the bones, giblets, and other parts that didn't get eaten tonight. I'll boil that tomorrow to make chicken stock for stews or soups.


The problem is that I don't have hours to cook. I have under an hour. I'm working my way up there to real cooking though......some day.
 
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  • #92
Evo said:
Isn't that tuna casserole? :biggrin:

Exactly!

*lisab LOVES tuna casserole :!) *
 
  • #93
lisab said:
Exactly!

*lisab LOVES tuna casserole :!) *
Come here, I have enough leftover tuna casserole in my fridge to kill 50 people. :-p
 
  • #94
Evo said:
Come here, I have enough leftover tuna casserole in my fridge to kill 50 people. :-p
She's not kidding! Listeria, Salmonella, whatever... it's in her fridge.
 
  • #95
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.

the nice thing about lentils is they're quick.

for something less quick, but still cheap and not a whole lot of actual work, soak dried pintos overnight. rinse and put in a crock pot with the above trinity of onion/celery/bell pepper, black pepper and salt, maybe some garlic. instead of the salt pork, get some of that sage breakfast sausage that you slice up, and brown it in a skillet like hamburger. toss the sausage in the pot and let it cook all day on low. serve over rice. cubed and pan-sauteed potatoes makes a good side, imo.
 
  • #96
Moonbear said:
What did it look like before the cat vomited it up? :rolleyes: Sorry Cyrus, it might taste good, but you need to work on presentation and photography...it looks like a bowl of vomit.

i agree. it looks so bland. make it more attractive and put more color to contrast the white.:wink:
 
  • #97
turbo-1 said:
Cyrus, cookbooks are OK as far as they go, but the real fun in cooking is creating your own meals. Think of things that might go well together and give them a whirl. My wife and I are always tossing things together and many of our favorite dishes were born that way. Recently we sauteed peppers, onions and mushrooms until they were browned, stirred in a can of black beans and some of our jalapeno salsa and served that over a bed of Basmati rice. It was delicious. We made a similar dish recently by mixing all those ingredients (including the steamed rice) putting them in a casserole dish topped with shredded cheeses, and baked it until the cheese melted in and browned on top.

I applaud your efforts and wish you well as you learn, but don't be too constrained by recipes. The best meal you've never had (yet) is probably riding around in your imagination right now. My wife took a course in gourmet French provincial cooking, yet she never makes a single dish that she made in that course. The practical things that she learned, like how to make a good soup stock, how to debone chickens, how to handle chef's knives, etc, were worth the tuition, but our best dishes still come from imagination and a creative treatment of whatever is available in our freezers or was on sale at the market. This morning we had a great breakfast of pan-fried potatoes and sea scallops sauteed in butter. Fresh scallops were on sale yesterday.


Yup, the key to learning to cook, is experimenting. Learn to know your cooking temps and measurements, as time goes on and yo master your own dishes, these factors will come naturally. I don't even use a measuring cup anymore.