Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

OK, I have said it before and will say it again.....out-of-focus food (middle strand of spaghetti in focus, all else out) is a lazy out for those with poor skills or equipment. The food out-of-focus is irrelevant, so why bother.

Fix the survey as per above, then come back.

Thank you for this bit. I am so tired of cooks of all kinds saying "caramelize the onions for 10 minutes." Only the really new to cooking wouldn't get it.....and my kind do take an hour or more. If you don't have the time, don't do the recipe.

The no browning part is silly. The point of cooking to to develop good flavor. Want to keep it simple? just put raw meat in the pot, add water and vegetables, and cook for three hours.....what's the point if your food isn't really good tasting.

Somewhere, some time ago, the "King of Braising" (friend of Bobby Flay) did lamb shanks and a "secret" addition was a little bit of salted anchovies.....just passing this along.

Cooking is a lot about adapting to time and place. If you (or I) don’t have a week to preen every piece of veg that goes into our stir fry, I does not matter. The cooking technique and choice of items comes first, and fussing over each leaf is a matter of tradition, time, or your age. Just do it.

Good selection of answers, but they seem to revolve around the idea that you don’t know how much to use. So, if you do your homework and learn the taste profile of the materials used in your cooking, you should have no problem. Can you add dried oregano, basil, rosemary (gads!) garlic WITH ASSURANCE? If so, why not learn how to add bay? Seems a bit of laziness enters here…..recipes tell me all and I can’t do it myself. Try it!

Love ya.

Halibut is full of worms.....my mom used to pick them out, but finally gave up and we enjoyed the extra protein.

I never salt large eggplant (a number of really good cooks I know do not either), so do yourself a favor and try this. Cut some rounds and salt one and no salt on another. Wash each, then try each....stop taking someone's word for correct or not. Maybe I just can't taste bitter, but I doubt it. Same goes for washing mushrooms....they are 95% water already and your washing them will not add a smidgen of water to the pot.

I love the contrast between Sicilian cooking, and that of my grandparents from under the shadow of Mt. Blanc in the far north of Italy. It’s like Garrison Keillor’s Norwegians of Lake Wobegon meet the next door Puerto Ricans. What’s not to love.

In Asia, one thing I have always enjoyed is that in areas without refrigeration, food is often held till the next day and eaten at room temp. There are always more subtle flavors in a warm food over a cold one. One neat little trick I saw was the food kept in an unglazed pot with a little water poured over the outside. Evaporation dropped the temp a few degrees and I guess retarded bacterial growth a little till the next day.

You folks that think these people, and this type of cooking are interesting, really need to get a life.

Dashi is the base for anything.....it even adds the "unknown" to a good pasta sauce. Buy the one pound box and enjoy.