h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ooh! I've just remembered 'The Man Who Ate Everything' by Jeffrey Steingarten, food writer for the NY Times. He describes his obsessive quest to find the best way to cook things (eg french fries - use horse fat!). He toured NYC armed with a spot pyrometer to measure the oven temperatures in his favourite pizza joints...and then tried to replicate them at home. After almost burning his apartment down by disconecting the thermostatic cutout in his oven, he tried to replicate a wood-fired oven in a domestic barbecue. He soon found that he could get near the right temperature by putting on the lid and blocking most of the ventilation holes - except for one, at which he pointed a leaf blower. It was all going well...until all the plastic fittings such as the lid handle liquified and slid off.

It just goes to show that what's great for one is deadly to another - those baked beans could kill me...

I'll have to start reading more labels. Although part of the problem is that you do all your research and read all the labels the first time round with that one shop taking hours, and then subsequently you just shop on automatic, picking the same brands you've already sussed out. Unfortunately, sometimes things change, recipes are altered and so on and that's when you're likely to miss something you'd rather not...

Yup, indeed. And restaurants change hands; the dodgy pizza that made me sick was from a pizza place i'd been going to for years here, now it's under new management....

They do have another pizza place here, which uses a genuine wood burning pizza oven, if anyone ever offers to take me out for pizza again, i will only agree if we go to that one; you can see the actually make the thing from scrtach & create your own pizza on the spot.

They use local cheese & veg, i've been at the market & seen the buying stuff.

zdt

I've just been next door to the Turkish supermarket. Dunno why I don't do that more often. Except for the sweets, which are nastily coloured and, well, very sweet, they generally have very good foods with zero additives.

Perhaps rather than trying to find prepared foods without in them, I need to invest in a bigger freezer and buy *everything* fresh

Thank goodness I live in a large enough city that the occasional prepared food without isn't impossible to find.

But I do like to cook fresh, at least on weekends. And for example, your refried beans take only a few minutes. In my early 20s, I lived in an apartment where the previous tenant had left behind a chest freezer, and I loved being able to freeze more stuff (though most foods are only good for a few months, you'd be surprised how quickly you can use them up!). Though every time it cycled, and the refrigerator cycled at the same time, it would blow the circuit breaker. I reckon it'd do the same thing in my kitchen now- the other day I attempted to run the dryer and the toaster oven at the same time and blew that fuse.

The barbecue story is why I haven't tried the home tandoor yet, even though I found a place that sells them. If I burned the place down, my renter's insurance wouldn't cover anything.

Turkish pickles. And cartons of ayran.

And sesame bread rings, and 1kg tins of feta, and a wide variety of lentils and fresh veg...

>>I lived in an apartment where the previous tenant had left behind a chest freezer

So you didn't have to take your bra off and lean out of the window.

>>1kg tins of feta

Tsk tsk! Feta is now D.O.C. - or whatever it's called in English/Deutsch. In fact, I've noticed that my supermarket now stocks 'Greek Style Salad Cheese'. In Turkish it's 'beyaz paynir' ('white cheese')

Sesame rings...to you mean the savoury 'simit'...or do you mean the coiled, flat, sweet pastries a little like an English Chelsea bun (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelsea_bun) but filled with sweetened tahini rather than cinammon ('tahinapita' )?

I only do that on flag day, Edward.

yeah, I need a hoist too...

re. the whole Feta thing.

I think we need to get a campaign going so that Cheddar can only be made there.

Guess I do meant "simit" - I only knew the Greek for them again. Of course, the two countries' cuisines are nothing alike

But it can be real feta, if it's sheep's milk and made in Greece

>>I think we need to get a campaign going so that Cheddar can only be made there.

But only if it's *proper* cheddar - not necessarily made in Somerset, but at very least by the cheddaring process. Not the mass-produced, supermarket stuff. Stuff like Mrs Keen's. http://www.keenscheddar.co.uk/


Ooh! Mrs Kirkham's Lancashire. http://www.mrskirkhams.com/


Here's my favourite cheese shop. They don't have a fridge. You can smell them from miles away. http://www.ijmellischeesemonger.com/


Cheese

Ugh, smelly cheese.

Ah, PC...you do feed me the lines! You know from past history the direction that any conversation on the musky aromas of cheese is going to take! See, for example, one of the quotes here:
http://bonoboworld.blogspot.com/2007/03/those-invisible-green-ideas-are.html

A fine cheese is a lot like sex. They're the only times you put anything that smells *that* bad anywhere near your mouth.

I'm jealous of your cheese shop. And everyone else's ability to get good cheddar. Unfortunately I have to have supermarket stuff. Which is an improvement on the deyed orange soap-like substance that the supermarket deli counter insists is Elizabethan Cheddar .

But my holy grail would be a shop not too far away where I could get Wensleydale. Perferably shepherd's purse, but I'm not fussy. Morrison's own brand would do right now.

I feed you the lines on purpose, Ed. Saves me the trouble of giving up TMI. Though when it comes to sex, a daily shower at least eliminates the less desirable smells.

Stinky cheese, though sets off my internal "don't eat that- it'll kill you" alarm. Rancid and/or moldy smells do the same. So does slightly sour milk- which means K and I end up eating pancakes every so often, if I haven't been drinking my coffee every day. Stinky, runny cheeses make me gag.

Wenselydale I have mixed feelings about. On the one hand - it's good that there's a reasonably popular and well known cheese that's not like Cheddar (where In grew up, Lancashire and Cheshire both outsold Cheddar). On the other hand, the 'traditional' Wensleydale in Hawes (three miles from my Mother's ancestral home, from where she got her name) is basically a modern industrial plant.

IJ Mellis sells a goregeous Caerphilly!

Q How do the Welsh make cheese?
A Caerphilly!