Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

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.

I buy the Costco Valbreso Feta "bricks" and put them directly into the freezer. They are fine when taken out, and shave nicely over a salad. You might just try wrapping a brick in plastic, put into freezer, and see what happens on thawing.

Fred

If you know how to cook, nothing comes close to Saveur for ideas and enjoyable reading in depth.

Most Asian homes have some sort of chili sauce, and most don't refrigerate it ( or curry paste in India) because their space is so small. The vinegar will keep everything OK.

My wife and I are retired; we fly fish six months and hang out in Tucson for the other six. We take three mags; Saveur, Flyfishing, and The Economist. We cook mostly Indian/ Asian as we worked in Asian rainforests for 30 years.

And, one more scampi trick is to put one or two anchovies into the mix. Your scampi appreciation will rise. In case you can't tell, scampi is one of my personal favorites.