Non-rose query to US members!

[Rosetherapy]

HI all
Have decided to brave making southern fried chicken (or similar) and have found some good recipes but they want 'poultry seasoning' or 'hot sauce'.
Does anyone have a translation please??
A hopeful hungry
Liz

[SerenaSYH]

To answer your question Liz poultry seasonings usually entail salt, paprika, onion powder, garlic powder. and cayenne or red pepper.

Liz one of my hobbies that I used to have was gourmet cooking until I got my border collie! No time now with roses and a Border Collie but I loved cooking French style etc. and I always cook with cream, butter and wines/liqueurs
.
However, to me personally, the best foods are always, always made from scratch! I can't stand getting generic "hot sauce" or the Tabasco, yuck! To really cook fantastic Southern cooking, it usually involves great spices and even the specific spice you choose can influence the flavor. For example plain red pepper has a subtle difference between cayenne pepper and even the brands you choose can bring food to a whole different level. Same with fresh versus dried.

One of the gourmet chefs that is verrrry popular in the U.S. is Bobby Flay. His recipe for Southern Fried Chicken is this...


Southern-Fried-Chicken


If I were doing his recipe I'd stay far away from that "hot sauce" and instead use the original ingredient he mentioned-- the chile de arbol powder. If worst comes to worst, you can always use the cayenne pepper if need be. But as I say again it depends on how unique and delicious you want your chicken to be. I'd even throw in some dried, super finely chopped, home-grown coriander too into that recipe had I been doing it! I love adding that special unique twist to my foods!

Have fun with that Bobby Flay recipe! I always watch him on Iron Chef of America too!

a hi-res trailer for a 2 double header challenge using the secret ingredient-the White House Organic Garden, lol!

an actual episode from Iron Chef America that shows what the whole show is about

Have fun cooking and Eating, Liz! As the Chairman would say À la cuisine! :D

[Rosetherapy]

Hi Serena!
Enjoyed your introduction and pictures by the way - it was fun to see what you looked like - now I am curious about everyone else! I'll see if I can get a pic of me up somewhere - never know - it might encourage others to do the same - nice to have a face to a name!

Anyway -I'm very impressed you were into gourmet cooking - wow! I never learnt cookery at school and my mum didn't have much time to show me so I ended up at University with enough skill to cook a jacket potatoe and the conviction that oven chips must be cooked in a grill pan. I was confused when my friend suggested cooking them in the oven - my response was (and they've never let me forget!) - oh but won't they fall through the slats?!

Ooop! Anyway - so I worked up a few dishes but mostly with packaged ingredients then when I met my husband he was a veggie so I learnt how to make a cheese sauce so i could make his favourite macaroni and cauliflower cheese. We were unfortunately beset with what you might call 'life challenges' (if you were very polite!) so not much time or energy to experiment - he then got throat cancer and couldn't have a lot of things - ended up eating 'smash' and plaice a lot! Still - I console myself with the fact that he did get to eat some good things like black pudding and liver and bacon casserole before the end - he had a craving for them despite being veggie - body must have needed them I guess!

I was lucky enough to meet a second soul mate (no I didn't realise there could be more than one either!) not long after and he eats everything so here was my chance! I started to try all sorts of things and am still building up. Did my first fried chicken the other night so I'm still rather clueless about basic things! However have tried all sorts of things like jambalaya, stuffed chicken breast, thai chicken curry,enchilada (although I'm only really guessing how to do that one!) etc. My biggest surprise was cooking a chicken - I didn't realise all you had to do was put it in the oven (pretty much!) What an excitement!

So.. yes I am still in the middle of my culinary journey - not quite gourmet yet - but there's time!! I am going to try the Bobby Fray recipe -thanks for that! I watched the clips too - looks fun - shame there wasn't more!

I tried a carribean style fried chicken recipe last night and despite my panicking it turned out quite nice. So.. I can see a long future of different fried chickens ahead!

I am a bit of a list freak and have made a spreadsheet of different recipes I have tried - good for when I am planning meals and totally forget what I can cook apart from about 3 recipes!

So.. having said that, of course I have a rose spreadsheet too!! I wanted something so I could compare heights/colours/frequency of blooming etc for my favourite ones. Helped me plan my pergola and rose garden. It was great fun researching - only I can get lost for hours in rose books - which happened to be if you're interested: the Beales Catalogue!, the Rose Expert (Dr Hessayon) and Botanica's pocket roses. I do have others but I was using those as my main source!

Anyway - have rambled on long enough - will let you know when I try the chicken recipe and how it goes! Thanks for the 'translation' of poultry seasoning too - I had a feeling hot sauce would be tabasco although as you say - probably better to use cayenne or similar!

Ciao for now!
Liz

[admin]

Originally Posted by SerenaSYH

Have fun with that Bobby Flay recipe! I always watch him on Iron Chef of America too!

... not really relavent to anything but the UK version of Iron Chef is the funniest thing I have seen in ages, I am not sure it is supposed to be but...

[SerenaSYH]

Liz, it's wonderful seeing all the varieties of food you are trying! that is terrrific! And I love your list ideas whether it's recipes and the recipes of roses a la Peter Beales :D Hurray for you! Liz, I am a crazy experimenter when it comes to foods and recipes, I am always adding and swapping out ingredients. With roses I do crazy organics experiments. I love wreaking havoc, lol!

Oh, dear, Pete, you are gonna string me up by my toenails, lol! but the Americans are whoopin' the butts off of Iron Chef UK, hehe! The chefs on Iron Chef of America are extremely fast and you get the best chefs from the entire world that come to compete specifically at the Iron Chef of America, so that's why you get all the action pack whallop! The flying pans, the lightning precision, and you can tell a huge difference in the cooking techniques and the plating design of the dishes. America is a hotbed because it's the melting pot when it comes to gourmet cooking. Whenever they have the international cooking contests, the Americans are usually taking home the top medals. It's because we choose the best chefs and flavors no matter what part of the world they come from. So if we send off a Team USA, for example, the Team Pastry chef may actually be a former Frenchman, now turned to an American citizen. Stuff like that, and a lot of cooking is taken from influences all around the world. We constantly innovate and renovate food as an art form.

However! the scary thing is if it's not gourmet cooking, standard American cooking is actually extremely gross and disgusting, lol! I mean mayonnaise and ketchup???? hot dogs???? gloppy disgusting American casseroles??? canned beans??? yuck, yuck yuck! lol! Our store-bought bread taste like cardboard. Whereas everyone knows how delicious Scottish shortbreads and tea cakes are. So we Americans definitely swing between the 2 extremes, lol!

[Rosetherapy]

Serena
Would love to know more about crazy organics experiements! What can these be?!

I'm sure I may be tempted to try and do clever rose breeding things further down the line but we need a greenhouse with glass in it first so I can begin to learn about growing things from seed! Rather exciting actually, as greenhouse is the next 'project' on our (long!) list. Nick, my partner, has built a pergola for me - he is a gem! and now he's got to build a base for our greenhouse and then move it (it only has glass in the roof as most of the rest was broken! Salutory lesson - do not build greenhouse straight onto the grass without a base because stones fly up from the lawnmower and break the panes!! There's a way to go yet but very excited about the possibilities!

On a cooking note - it is boiling hot today and my partner did the cooking!! (Ok - it was BBQ!)

Re Iron Chef - I find American TV more hyper than British TV - perhaps that's why we're not doing so well in the contest! ;) Too laid back in comparison! Don't really see many American programmes, but when I had sky I loved to watch World Biker Build off and Wrecks to Riches - really miss those programmes. That's another interest of mine - engines! Just don't know much about them yet but getting there! I need to learn a bit more for the children's book I'm writing - call it background research!

Anyway - enough rambling - back to framing pictures (it's too hot to garden!)
Ciao for now!
Liz

[SerenaSYH]

Well, Liz we have an organics experiment thread going at Peter Beales

organics experiments

I had to stop mine because we are having unending rains and flooding storms here so I can't spray anything on my leaves now because that would mean more wetness on the leaves and everything would wash away anyways. Next year I hope the weather will be like last year's normal weather so that way I can do a truly uninterrupted organics experiment for my garden.

Liz the greenhouse sounds so exciting! Ronymaxwell does tons of building projects too! I bet your partner and Rony would have a great time together discussing building projects, lol! Be sure to check out his intro thread too! I'm going to pull his thead up to the top so you can see it!

About Iron Chef, it's not hyper, it's actually the techniques of cooking which gives us the speed and beautiful flavors. If you do a side-by-side comparison between the UK version and the U.S. version, you can tell that the Americans are far superior in their cooking techniques to be bluntly honest...The techniques are truly incredible and the plating design is so beautiful. Here are more examples of the American side of what the dishes look like.

Battle Pheasant with glimpses of the technique and final presentations

Battle Rabbit glimpses of rabbit trussing and dicing

[Rosetherapy]

Hi Serena
All makes sense now!
I'll take your word for it about American cooking techniques but think we need a bit more US TV over here so I can see what they do. I always think the plating up is a separate skill on it's own. Perhaps one could be a 'plate designer' - someone else cooks it and they arrange it on the plate!
Thanks for the thread postings - I must get a picture of my pergola on here soon so you can see Nick's latest work of art. The greenhouse is still stationery! ;) he's doing different building work this weekend - working on the car! One thing at a time eh?

Liz