cellio | food (condiments, fish, fruit soup)

Dani forwarded me this interesting article about mustard and ketchup. It's long, but I found it worth reading. Basic question: why are there entire sections in the grocery store for mustard, but there are still only a few players for ketchup? (I'm not much of a ketchup person myself; I generally find it boring. For french fries or burgers or hot dogs, my condiment of choice is brown mustard. I've also been known to dip fries in barbeque sauce.)

When I last went fish shopping the person at the counter informed me that they no longer carry grouper (a versatile fish that I like to cook with), but that what they label as "basa" (not bass) is the same fish. Google tells me that both names are used for the same fish, so I guess this means they've changed their source and the sources used different labelling. My basa fillets were a little thinner than the grouper fillets I used to get, but otherwise it seems to be indistinguishable.

This was good: take basa fillets, put in a lightly-oiled casserole (I used olive oil) and drizzle oil on top, coat with "Auntie Arwen's fish blend" (assorted herbs, garlic, onion, I think paprika), bake at 425 for about 10 minutes, then add thinly-sliced havarti cheese on top and bake just until melted.

I went surfing for a recipe for cold cherry soup (not being satisfied with the one I know) and found something that mostly worked. (Dani has previously described a cherry soup with sour cream; the key word seems to be "Hungarian".) Boil water, pitted cherries, and sugar for a while until the cherries soften; in a bowl beat cream (if the cherries are sweet) or sour cream (if not) with a little flour, stir in some of the hot mixture, and then pour everything into the pot and simmer (don't boil). Chill well before serving. The flour's job, I presume, is to thicken the broth, but even though I beat it with the cream for a while, I got little globs of flour in the resulting soup. Maybe I used too much flour? (I had non-sour cherries, so I used cream. The recipe didn't specify the type of cream; I used heavy and will probably try light next time.)

Tonight after Shabbat Dani wanted to go to Longhorn, a steak house at the waterfront (don't know if that's a chain or a local instance). They have two non-shellfish fish dishes, both salmon. The grilled salmon was very good, and the steamed broccoli was tasty and not overcooked. The seasoned fries were reasonable, though I failed to procure brown mustard for them and had to settle for yellow. I didn't see anything vegetarian on the menu, but I like salmon so I'd definitely go there again.

But next time we'll sit at a table, not a booth. This isn't the first restaurant I've been to lately where the seats in the booths are really far from the table. In some (like Gullifty's), if I sit all the way back my feet don't touch the floor. So I end up having to sit on the front of the seat, with no back support at all. I'm short, but I don't think I'm farther out than one standard deviation. Are restaurants now planning booth layouts around very large people? (Ironically, the very large people I've had occasion to observe seem to prefer tables with chairs.)

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My experience around here is that booths too often have the seats too close to the table. Though I'm basing that on two local non-chain restaurants...of course, I don't think either of the places I have in mind have actual table/chair combos...

I've been noticing lately that either the seats are too low, or the tables are too high - if the table's at my boobs, I feel like I'm five again, you know? I've actually asked for a phone book to sit on once or twice...

I've noticed that booth seats tend to be lower than regular chairs. I'm not sure why that is.

Another way to thicken the cherry soup is to use gelatin instead of flour. (I'd recommend putting the gelatin into the hot mixture rather than the sour cream and stirring thoroughly to avoid clumps.) The fruit soup recipe I use calls for gelatin, and it seems to work pretty well.

I didn't think of gelatin. (Actually, I've never cooked with gelatin, so that probably makes sense.) Some recipes I found called for cornstarch instead of flour. Next time I'll try either gelatin or cornstarch. (What proportion of gelatin do you use?)

I generally don't cook with gelatin either and wouldn't have thought of it if I hadn't been using a recipe that called for it! I use one standard box of gelatin for every 3-4 pounds of frozen fruit. (I can give you the recipe, if that will make it any easier to follow.)

Thanks! If it's not too much trouble, I'd welcome the recipe.

It's very easy. Put 3-4 pounds of frozen fruit (any kind) into a larger soup pot to thaw -- the larger the soup pot the better. Once thawed, add enough water to cover the fruit. Bring to a boil and then let simmer for at least 5 minutes. (I strongly recommend that you watch the pot once it boils as the liquid tends to bubble up and overflow -- hence the preference for a large pot.) Remove from heat and use colander or strainer to put liquid into a bowl. Add one box of gelatin (any flavor) to the liquid and blend thoroughly. Put the remaining fruit pieces into a blender or food processor to make a puree. Add puree to liquid and blend thoroughly. Chill for at least 3 hours before serving.

Thanks! That sounds easy. (I assumed there would be more ingredients, which is why I asked for the recipe. This sounds nice -- and hey, parve. :-) )

I think it's a great summer recipe -- it does well as an appetizer or dessert and tastes best when it's hot outside. It also has a nice simple flavor. (There's not enough gelatin in it to interfere with the taste of the fruit, at least not to my palate.)

Some (completely unconfirmed) theories on the large booth trend:

-Its a subtle effort to make chairs more desirable. That's fine with me. I've never really cared for booths (to a point where I'll often split from a group rather than be stuck in the middle or inside of a bench).

-They're easier to clean.

-Some people enjoy feeling very small in an oversized booth.

-It's a side effect of wall size. The wall size is not an even multiple of booth size, so they stretch them out to fill the space.

I hate being in the middle of a three-seater bench in a booth. I'm not too fond of the inside position either. (Here's one I really don't get: places that have buffets and booths but no tables, like Eat 'n Park the last time I was there.)

It's a side effect of wall size. The wall size is not an even multiple of booth size, so they stretch them out to fill the space.

That makes sense. I'll bet booth placement is pretty low in the list of factors they consider when planning renovations (or construction). That is, they get as far as "we'll put N booths there", but they don't actually decide what amount of space is optimal for N.

That ketchup/mustard article was really interesting; I may have to repost that to my own journal. I certainly see his point about the gazillion types of mustard (seriously. some of it is just WEIRD), but personally, I consider barbeque sauce and cocktail sauce to be varieties of ketchup. The basic ingredients are the same, and for the most part, they're interchangable - I have dipped battered shrimp into ketchup, frech fries into cocktail sauce, and EVERYTHING into BBQ sauce.

The restaurant booth thing drives me crazy! I agree with Willie that it's probably a function of wall-size, but the problem seems to afflict newly-built chain restaurants much more frequently than old-timey diner booths. I think it's a function of cheap manufacturing processes.

And about the cherry soup: I was reading a kitchen science article recently about how flour works as a thickener. To make a velvety sauce with flour, you have to heat it with fat or water, to release the gluten. If it doesn't get hot enough, the flour molecules won't break down and you end up with clumps. I think the same process is at work in gelatin and cornstarch.

Thanks for the flour advice. Maybe the recipe I had would have worked better if I'd combined the flour with the cup of hot liquid before mixing with the cream. (I assume the point of the small amount of hot liquid is to avoid curdling the cream by dumping it straight into the hot pot.)

food (condiments, fish, fruit soup)

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Booths

Re: Booths

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