Recipes, keep or toss?

I subscribe to Cook's Illustrated (keeping all of the issues so far) and have a couple of cook books plus a one or two recipes here or there. Not exactly sure how much I'll ever get to....

No really a collection of recipes that could be considered sizable in any fashion or manner.

Yes.
Just in case. You know.
It probably is about time to toss them, though (Thanks for putting this idea in my head) & reduce the clutter.

Tht one sounds just vile osso. Sometimes cooking gets overly complicated and ingredients dont complement each other. Its like adding salt and sugar to a gravy to beef up its intensity.

Id toss it.

I find that some of my moms old Russian and Polish recipes are ones we actually use, and certain ethnic ones (like sopaipillas, or Ukrainan nut rolls, or crawfish etouffe are keepers). SOmething that we hadnt ever made since getting the recipe is a definition of tossable is I ever heard of one.

French, Italian, and Vietnamese cooking can be sometimes overly complex for no reason, and the results can really funk up a good ingredient.

Like crab, I find that most vietnamese and Italian recipes that use crab, just screw up the fine sdelicate flavor and texture of one of natures most nearly perfect foods. And anything French served with an accompaniying pancake can be best uased as trout bait (IMHO).

SIMPLEST IS BEST.

OK, farmer, you have my attention.

On sopapillas, I'm ignorant, they are just foofoo in my short experience.

We did have a friend vietnamese chef, later chinese chef, cook us up fresh crab (well, many) in a violent wok, but I personally don't remember the flavor - my ex said curry. Whatever, I loved it, we loved it.

WQE LOVE COOKS ILLUSTRATED. It is the one magazine that goes into the CHEMISTRY of cooking and why something ahppens. The demise of GOURMET MAGAZINE was inevitable. It , like Organic Gardening, became repetitive and cyclic in its recipe collections and they gave you no other information than some brief investigation into really exotic ingredients.
COOKS gives you the lowdown on the central ingredients that we usually get at the market.

I remember the article about dry packed scallps.FOR years Id been trying to do pan seared scallops with supermarket scallops and they just wouldnt brown before getting leather like.
It turns out that COOKS did an investigation on the same thing and found that supoermarket and fish store scallops are usually soaked ina solution of Sodium/CAlcium metaphosphate (A natural surfactant and dispersant). The stuff is commercially known as CALGON and is used as an agent to retain the turgidity of some seafoods. IT also keeps the water comntent high and gives a funky flavor (like soap) to the fish and scallops. SO< COOKS found several places where yopu can get DRY PAXK scallops and did their pa sear with pwrfect results. USually only restaurants get the dry pack. SO COOKS did a detailed study of this one thing that made the whole years subscription worth it, because you see, most all seafoods are soaked in Calgon also. Calgon retards spoilage on fish and seafoods but it also hogs up the physical proprties of the food and adds a bad flavor.

I remember twice cooked scallops at a certain chinese restaurant in LA Chinatown. The Fortune, perhaps. Thanks for the clue..

Sopaipillas FOO FOO?
Hell no.They are a staple served aside any Texmex dish that is gonna be hot. Instead of drinking beer, a soapipilla is dipped in honey and eaten like a fried bread along with any really hot food.
When I had an Albuquerque office at the SAndia complex, aom of our manager were native Texmexicans and some of the best dinners Ive had included a meat in a hot side dressing,topped with an unrolled steamed Sandia pwepper and covered wita perfect fried egg. A bowl of Sopaipillas was there and these little puffy breads were eaten with the meal .

Currying up crab is just what Im talking about. Whats rong with exppressing the crab flavor. Dont cover it up unless its some seafood that can stand up to curry , like shrimp or firm flesh fish.
Crabs way too delicate.

Yeh, that is what our vietnamese pal did.

On the other hand, I am new here and think little of sopapillas at the occasional restaurant, though I'm sentimental about them from mexico in years back. Big eh.

With sopaipillas, home made is better and fresh is best. They sould be tender but with a crispy cust that takes the honey and can eaten in hand after a bite of really hot food.

I was never really impressd with Vietnames food or much of the Indian curries because the job of the cooking in those two was to "mask" the ingredients with nook ma'm or curry or gai. In oriental foods I really liked the flavors of traditional Cantonese where they would let the ingredient present itself and you had an option of as little or as much of a sauce as you wanted.
Like poached sea cucumbers in a seawater/vinegar poaching sauce. It was served with a side bowl of three different dippys. I loved Taiwanese and Japanese for that very reason. Japanese has a flavor of the seafood that is celebrated, not some heavily spiced sauce. (except for unagi sushi)

IM GETTIN HUNGRY AND I ATE SOME PUNKIN PIE and LAPSANG TEA AT 10 pm.

Snort, I agree with some of your assertions and rail defensively at others.

Be well and happy, kid.

Mmmm, good stuff.

http://whatscookingamerica.net/CynthiaPineda/Sopapillas/Sopapillas.htm

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/real-sopapillas/detail.aspx


Our next door neighbor brought over Christmas tamales, chili, cookies and something I'm not quite sure what it was. Maybe one of you know. I plan to ask the neighbor for the recipe.

It had a shape and texture of a dense fritter about the size of a large walnut. The center of it was a slightly different color and texture from the outer shell of dough. I couldn't quite tell what the center was made of. It had both a meaty taste and a sweet taste from either currants or raisins. It is possible that it was some kind of heavily-breaded meatball, dipped in a jam and then coated with fritter batter before frying. When eating, it also had a very subtle bit of heat that snuck up on you minutes after eating it.

Ok, now I'm interested..

I'm guessing that they were a version of Buñuelos, but it had a different tasting center, more savory than the sweetened dough of a fritter.

Here's a photo of bunuelos. They look very similar except these didn't have the powdered sugar on them.

that makes sense.

Bunuelos

I'm personally anti fry - I know if it is done right with just the right temps, it's not bad health wise - I just can't imagine attaining all that myself. So I cut out a lot of foods for my making them from many cultures. Beignets, for example, but that's just the start. For those who can deal with the temp monitoring, go for it.

I had the same dilemma, recipes that I had saved and cookbooks with one or two things in I liked - the rest of the book I would never use.
One winter I decided to go through photos and through out the ones I did not know in which album they would fit and got following idea.
I got several folders and red, blue, yellow and green sheets of paper.
Put the red in one folder, blue in another etc.
Red for meat recipes, blue for fish, yellow for egg and cheese, green for vegetables.
Under the recipe I put a photo. Either taken when we were having the dish or when the recipe was from a friend a picture of that person. Or a photo matching the name of the dish. If the cookies are called"Grandma´s cookies" I put a picture of my grandmother there. By pasta dishes I put photos from trips in Italy etc etc.
It makes a lot of fun to look at the recipes now and it is so much easier to find.
The ones in cookbooks I just cut out and got rid of the book.

You are so not me, saab, or me, you. Actually quite jolly re our conversing.

Sopapillas are a triqangular shaped puff. They are made of a sweet yeast dough and are double proofed so they really puff nicely. The dough is rolled out and cut into these triangular shaped flats. Then they are dumpwed into the hot fat and they puff up and get golden brown. The recipe is the MExican equivalent of a punchkie or a biegnet or araised donut (a little crispier skin).
Many cultures use the same basic dough and make it their own. The picture shos a basket of them and honey is drizzled on and the sopapillas are an accompaniment to hot foods. They were all over the place in ALbuquerque when I was there in the 80's and 90's, and even early this decade.

You guys gotta find a vgood tex mex place that serves a steamed pepper and a fried egg on top of their enchiladas.