Monthly Cooking Thread - May 2022

[Jamestown1630]

I bought some new gadgets and products recently. I think the most interesting was the ‘Sushi Bazooka’. There are lots of these available, but they all work along the same lines and make it much easier to fill and roll Maki Sushi, California Roll, etc. It doesn’t always come out as perfect on the first try as some videos make it look, but with a little practice it’s great. 'How Daily' shows how it works:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qe8GsJ3M4F0

I was introduced to this type of sushi by a Korean friend who calls it ‘Kimbap’. She made it with imitation crab (but the little 'salad' shrimps might be better for those who don’t like ‘Krab’), cucumber, pickled daikon, and strips of cooked egg (mix eggs as for scrambled eggs, spread a thin layer in a frying pan, and cook quickly so that when it’s done it’s like a big tortilla that you can cut into strips.)

And you must have the sear-your-mouth horseradish condiment, ‘Wasabi’, to go with it. The pickled ginger usually sold with Sushi is also very good, and in recent years I’ve found both the horseradish and the ginger in the Asian sections of many American supermarkets.

In a local health food store I found an unusual cracker. The century-old Inés Rosales company in Spain makes several types of these and they appear to be available in two sizes. They’re different from the crackers we’re used to – softer, and sort of halfway between a biscuit and a cracker, with unique textures and flavors, some savory and others sweet. These are available from lots of vendors online, and while they’re more expensive they’re worth it, especially for entertaining. Since they are softer, if you are going to serve them as an hors d’oeuvre, it would probably be best to wait until the last minute to apply any spread or topping that’s very ‘wet’.

We bought a Ninja air fryer last month, and so far we’ve tried two things in it – Brussels sprouts and steak. Neither turned out very well, but we’re assured that it takes some tweaking and practice to figure out, so I’ll have to do a progress report later. (One thing I really want to try in it is frozen onion rings, but for some reason our stores that usually have them - as well as French fries - have none. I’m not sure why – that kind of thing is usually out-of-stock around Super Bowl time, but normally available. This is the only extended shortage I’ve noticed since early in Covid when we couldn’t buy toilet paper, chlorine bleach or hand sanitizer.)

There’s a restaurant in Austin, Texas called ‘El Arroyo’ that is very popular for its Tex-Mex food, but most famous there and elsewhere for the ‘readerboard’ signs it displays outside. They do a different saying every day, many humorous, some mildly philosophical or even very sober. Over the past couple of years, they've gotten a lot of sign-mileage out of Covid:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDJhbvQnaFE

-JT

[Trillian]

Italian Coffee Cream

[Jamestown1630]

I couldn’t view the recipe, but I have a couple of chocolate recipes that call for powdered instant coffee or espresso. I recently bought Butternut espresso to try in them.

[pugmama]

I like to visit thrift shops to see what kitchen items they have. There are some amazing bargains. I am looking for some cast iron pans. We have a used restaurant appliance store in town, but items are too large for home use. Got some great knives there though.

[Jamestown1630]

We see them very occasionally in the thrift store, but in recent years people have really grabbed them up.

We have several generations’ worth of cast iron. Some of them have been stored and really need to be cleaned up.

I’ve begun to suspect that our thrift store sends the more collectible stuff to higher-end, more ‘antique-y’ stores. They had a lot more really nice vintage stuff in earlier years. I’d find nice things from the 1950s for 5 or 10 dollars that would go for much more on Ebay or Etsy.

I think the internet has made these stores a lot smarter about what they take in and what they can get for it. And we see collectors in the thrift store checking the internet to see if something they’ve spied might be valuable.