budget/ethnic cooking thread

[El Diablo]

mike,

Tell us a little about your background and what got you into cooking this stuff. Just read a few of your blog entries, awesome stuff.

[bozzer]

what's your favourite recipe on the blog?

[mikeczyz]

favorite thing to eat was prolly the green curry fried rice....i'm a shrimp/fried rice FREAK.

favorite thing to cook was the tom yum soup...it's got an incredible aroma as it cooks. literally, find me a woman who smells like tom yum and i will chain her to my bed.

[Yeti]

haha, i was about to type 'have you ever thought about cooking with more expensive ingredients, or can you do pretty much everything you want cheaply?' then clicked your link to see a new lobster recipe. very nice.

[mikeczyz]

yah, my roommate paid for the lobsters.

and yes, i've thought about cooking with more expensive ingredients but i don't really see the point unless it's to impress someone with "luxury" ingredients. for me, the whole point of cooking is deliciousness (and balanced nutrition, i guess)...if I can accomplish that with inexpensive goods, why bother spending more money?

how do you guys feel about that?

[JaBlue]

Mike, what you do is awesome but at least for me nothing beats a nice juicy steak. A lot of times premium ingredients are just what people like best. Not saying you wouldn't knock my socks off with the stuff you cook but if a nice cut of meat is on sale at a reasonable price I aint gonna pass it up.

I like your philosophy.

[mikeczyz]

Personal taste is, by definition, subjective, no?

If I have a nice juicy steak and a plate of fried rice in front of me, I'm going for the fried rice 95/100 times. Thus, I cook the types of food that I enjoy eating, ldo.

It's also really easy finding all the ingredients for this sorta stuff in my San Fran neighborhood. Back when I lived in Evanston, Illinois, I couldn't find ANY of the necessary ingredients. I sorta morph my style to what's readily available. For instance, if I moved to the Mission district, I'm sure I'd start cooking more Mexican/latin food.

[mikeczyz]

[ QUOTE ]
mike,

Tell us a little about your background and what got you into cooking this stuff. Just read a few of your blog entries, awesome stuff.

[/ QUOTE ]
Shameless bump...

I started cooking with my mom. She's Taiwanese and used to make dumplings and those sorts of things. If you've ever made wontons or pork buns, you know how much easier it is when you've got a bunch of people and work like an assembly-line. We also used to watch the cooking shows on PBS...me, mom and my two brothers would take notes and then we'd go grocery shopping and try to recreate things...mmmm...paella in Alaska in the middle of winter. I think this is when I first became interested in cooking.

Like most people, I lived in the dorms when I first got to college. My food needs were taken care of through the cafeteria. However, once I moved off campus, things changed. For a good 6 months, I lived off of Lipton's Noodles and Sauce. I would eat one package for lunch, another for dinner. After a while, I realized that things needed to change and started to think about cooking real food. Throughout those first 6 months, I had been watching the Food Network nearly constantly so I had a fairly good idea of the motions of cooking although it was all theoretical knowledge at that point. I picked up a copy of Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home and read through it. I never attempted any of the recipes but it taught me that cooking was very flexible and should be fun. If you've ever read the book, you'll know what I mean. My cooking at this time could be called more experiments than anything else. Really, really ghetto cuisine.

Around this time, I dropped out of college. I moved to Chicago and lived with my brother and a few other guys. I also went to work for a Mobil 5-star restaurant and it was there that I learned a new appreciation for food and what food could be. Really inspiring stuff. I've been cooking for myself for nearly 8 years now and have found my cooking constantly evolving. It's also alot of fun and relaxing. I find cooking very cathartic and wish I knew more people who liked to do it. I'm not even looking for competency...a general interest would suffice. Sadly, most of my current classmates subsist on Hot Pockets and delivery.

[xxThe_Lebowskixx]

[ QUOTE ]
literally, find me a woman who smells like tom yum and i will chain her to my bed.

[/ QUOTE ]
you know where you can find the tom yum babes homeboy.