Confessions of a Wayward Cook.

[Jester]

I am a huge fan of garlic, but yes, it is kind of important to know the difference between a clove and a bulb!

[RavenStarr]

Yep well I might as well go ahead and confess. I was making garlic chicken. I was using a whole chicken and the recipe called for 1-2 cloves of garlic. I bought 2 of what I thought were cloves of garlic. I didn't know at the time they were actually bulbs of garlic. I used both bulbs of garlic in the chicken thinking I was using 2 cloves ...So yeah you can imagine how that turned out.

[Jester]

Ouch. Though to be fair, two measly cloves of garlic on a whole chicken is NOT going to make it "garlic chicken." Personally, I like the way that the Stinkin' Rose in San Fran does it: on their menu, they have a "Forty Clove Chicken." I haven't tried it, but I'm sure it's lovely. (I opted for the Silence of the Lamb Shank, with fava beans and a Chianti glaze....)

For most people, the the truth is somewhere in between 2 and 40 cloves for a whole bird. (Though I think the Forty Clove Chicken is just a half bird, so that would make it 80 cloves for the whole bird....)

[ArcticChicken]

You can get little knick-knacks that separate the egg for you - put them over a cup, break the egg into them and the yolk rests in the middle while the white slides through the gaps into the cup. Good if you're in a hurry.

I have never been in so much of a hurry that I don't have time to separate an egg without a gadget.

My kitchen is abysmal. It's tiny, and pretty much all the tools are older than I am. Which is fine if they've been well taken care of. The thing I am currently lusting after is a new set of baking sheets. They're inconsistently covered in a few decades of baked on grease and not anything remotely like level.

[Mikkel]

For most people, the the truth is somewhere in between 2 and 40 cloves for a whole bird. (Though I think the Forty Clove Chicken is just a half bird, so that would make it 80 cloves for the whole bird....)

You may have larger garlic bulbs, but I'd need more than two bulbs to get 40 cloves. The trouble with Ravenstarr's chicken was probably that the spices was unbalanced.
It would taste very strongly of garlic just with one bulb.

[monolayth]

Hmmm, I confess that I hate touching raw meat. I will do it. I just hate it.

[ArcticChicken]

Hmmm, I confess that I hate touching raw meat. I will do it. I just hate it.

My boyfriend does too, luckily I don't mind so I usually deal with the raw meat when we're cooking together. Have I mentioned how lucky I am to have a man who likes to cooks as much as I do?

[Jester]

Myself, I love the feel of a good cut of meat. No, seriously, I do. Tell all the jokes you want, there is a beauty and a sensuality in food that is unequaled anywhere else.

You may have larger garlic bulbs, but I'd need more than two bulbs to get 40 cloves. The trouble with Ravenstarr's chicken was probably that the spices was unbalanced.
It would taste very strongly of garlic just with one bulb.

Oh, I'd probably need more than two bulbs to get 40 cloves. And two bulbs would unquestionably make a chicken quite garlicky. But some of us really like garlic. And let's be honest....simply two cloves would not be all that much.

[Marmalady]

Trust me, I am fully capable of doing it without a gadget.

I'm sure you are... it was just a suggestion....

[MoonCat]

My grandmother showed me how to separate eggs using just the shells. This was a woman who could put together a cake without even looking at the recipe and it always came out perfectly.

My ancestors were Polish and German, so we ate a lot of traditional Polish and German foods as kids. Kinda embarrassing that my sister and I did not ever make pierogi by ourselves until both my mother and grandmother were gone. We have to do that again one of these days...

My sister does most of the cooking. I'm not very domestic. I get an urge to bake about twice a year - for Halloween (soul cakes anyone?) and Christmas. A couple years ago we made a Yule Log cake that came out great. We used a jelly roll pan and when it was cool, I frosted it with chocolate frosting and then used a the tines of a fork to give it a texture like bark. Then I shook powdered sugar over it to look like snow and decorated it with holly leaves (real ones) and candy berries.

[Becks]

Becks, do you despise your kitchen because it's a suckass kitchen, or do you despise it because you just flat out don't like to cook?

I greatly enjoy cooking.

My kitchen sucks. I hate it.

[Jester]

Yeah, I know the feeling. My kitchen right now is adequate. It doesn't suck, but it doesn't rock, either.

Back in '05 after Hurricane Wilma destroyed our old apartment and the roommates and I were looking for a new place, I found one place that I loved. The location was perfect, but the place was small, the bedrooms were too small, but the kitchen was fantastic! Oh, how I wanted that kitchen.

In the end, it's better that I didn't take that place, as my roommates might have killed me. (NOT that they would have approved it anyway, but you know what I mean.)

I look forward to the day I have a semi-real kitchen, with plenty of counter space for prep, good appliances, and plenty of cabinet space for all my kitchen stuff.

Actually, one of my dreams for if I ever win the lottery is moving into a new place....with a killer kitchen!

[MaggieTheCat]

Ditto with the cream of tartar. What the hell IS that, anyway?

As someone mentioned, it's used when whipping egg whites, and in some baking recipes. I know my mom's rolled sugar cookies have cream of tartar in them. If you've had a jar of it laying around for a long time, it's probably best to toss it and get some fresh if you need it for whipping egg whites or something someday.

I have never cooked with fennel (or anise, as some call it), despite the fact that it looks really interesting. There are lots of things I haven't cooked with, but this one just keeps popping up on all the cooking shows. What am I missing out on???

I love fennel! There's only one dish I've ever made with it so far, but my husband and I love it:

Wash and slice the bulb of the fennel. Thinly slice some carrots. Toss together with olive oil, a touch of honey, salt, pepper, and fennel seeds. Roast in a 400 degree oven for 15-20 minutes until tender.

It's a great veggie side dish. Since my husband doesn't like too many vegetables, it's great to add to our normal rotation of potatoes/squash/carrots/corn. There's also a recipe for a fennel and mint salad that I keep meaning to try, but haven't gotten around to it yet.

I have never made meat balls. Burgers? Sure. Meat Loaf? Made my first a few weeks ago. Meat balls? Nada.

I love meatballs. Sometimes for a quick meal, I'll buy sausage links, take the casings off, portion them into tiny meatballs, and bake until cooked through. Toss with marinara sauce and linguine for quick spaghetti and meatballs. But that's not really homemade. I have made homemade beef/pork appetizer meatballs (it's really similar to a standard meat loaf mixture.) Simmer in a sauce of grape jelly and cocktail sauce (the kind you'd dip shrimp in) -- sounds weird, I know, but it's delicious. And I also have an amazing ground turkey meatball recipe that I toss in an Asian sauce and serve over rice.

I've never made my own pasta. Always out of a box.

I've never made my own pasta either, and I used to get mine out of a box from the grocery store...not anymore. Recently we started getting gourmet whole grain and veggie pastas from a couple of local small businesses; flavors like garlic and black pepper, five Italian herb, szechuan orange spice, lemon pepper, carroway rye...the list goes on and on. Not as fancy as making my own, maybe, but they blow store-bought boxed pasta out of the water. I'll never go back to plain ol' spaghetti again.

Secrets of my own? Hmm...

Not too long ago, I was making a boxed cake mix (which is bad enough...I'm kind of a snob when it comes to baked goods, I almost always make everything from scratch.) It was an angel food cake. I got it in the oven, but had the rack above the cake too close to the rack the cake was on, and as the cake rose, it sort of...baked around my oven rack.

Another baking incident...I was baking cookies and was rotating the pans around, when about 6 cookies slid right off the sheet and onto the bottom burner of the oven. We had a small fire, but it extinguished itself in a few seconds. I was sad to lose the cookies, though.

One time I was making a sauce for a stir-fry. For this particular sauce, I usually dissolve a bit of corn starch in water and then add it to the sauce to thicken it. Well, I grabbed what I thought was corn starch and added about a tablespoon of it to some water, then dumped it into the rest of my sauce. Then realized it wasn't corn starch, it was baking powder. And I was out of most of the other ingredients that I had used to make the sauce.

I'm sure there are more, but it's late, and I'm tired. More later!

[Mytical]

Thread only for cooks huh? I guess I should leave then. I am one of the few people I know who have managed to burn water. Well, technically the pan..not the water..but that is beside the point. Its easy to do.

1) Turn stove on to boil water.
2) Get distracted, as it is easy for me to do
3) Notice only when the pan is so black that it smells.

Burning water 101.

Surprisingly I can make a good pizza.

[wraiths_crono]

Living in AZ and thus not trusting the 'Fresh Fish' offered in the valley, I will never attempt to make sushi.

(side note, I think AJs fine foods may carry the quail eggs or just raid a nest there are TONS of those nests out in Avondale.)