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tashby


Apr 21, 2010, 3:25 PM

Post #1 of 35 (5745 views)

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The worst cooking task is....

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Today, my vote goes to peeling, and especially, deveining camarones.

Tedious + uncooperative + trying to fling the stringy little nasties = blech.



Anonimo

Apr 21, 2010, 4:49 PM

Post #2 of 35 (5729 views)

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Re: [tashby] The worst cooking task is....

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Yes, when they are camarones chicos, it's an onerous task.
There's a discussion somewhere, perhaps here, as to what the "vein" holds. I just usually leave it in and grit my teeth! :-)

Best answer: don't cook camarones. Let your local marisquería do it for you.

Saludos,
Anonimo


chinagringo


Apr 21, 2010, 5:11 PM

Post #3 of 35 (5723 views)

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Re: [tashby] The worst cooking task is....

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Is doing the dishes after I have soiled every pan and utensil in the kitchen.
Regards,
Neil
Albuquerque, NM



La Isla


Apr 21, 2010, 5:18 PM

Post #4 of 35 (5721 views)

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Re: [chinagringo] The worst cooking task is....

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.... chopping onions. I only enjoy crying while watching sad movies.


esperanza

Apr 21, 2010, 5:46 PM

Post #5 of 35 (5712 views)

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Re: [tashby] The worst cooking task is....

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Shredding scallions. Cutting one of them--or 10--into 1/16"X3" shreds to garnish a Chinese dish makes me crazy. But I do it.




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Peter


Apr 21, 2010, 5:46 PM

Post #6 of 35 (5712 views)

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Re: [tashby] The worst cooking task is....

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...doing anything with someone else in MY kitchen. I clean as I go along. I do not permit anything being left in the sink. I have every move I make down to the split second so if someone else is there they are in my way and my timing is thrown off for every task.

Anyone insisting on "helping" me is making it more difficult. I will permit my compañera to assist me in a limited way and have a worktable/cutting board for her that is out of the way.


Rolly


Apr 21, 2010, 6:15 PM

Post #7 of 35 (5706 views)

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Re: [Peter] The worst cooking task is....

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Peter said "I do not permit anything being left in the sink."

Amen! I have a rule in my house that I never go to bed with dishes in sink. The last time I violated the rule, we had a long power failure which put our water pump out. Damn mess.

I don't have any kitchen hates, except ants and the awful smell of the ant spray.

I have a two-burner stove top and no oven, so it takes careful planning to do anything complicated. In fact, I'm planning for such an adventure tomorrow. I'm going to try my version of Andriana's pescado zarandeado con camarones. Pictures to follow if it's not a total bust.

Rolly Pirate


morgaine7


Apr 21, 2010, 8:15 PM

Post #8 of 35 (5681 views)

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Re: [tashby] The worst cooking task is....

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I love eating and don't mind cooking, but I don't care for shopping or cleaning up. The worst? Preparation: washing, peeling, slicing, and the like. I find all that very tedious.

Kate


arbon

Apr 22, 2010, 5:58 PM

Post #9 of 35 (5640 views)

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Re: [tashby] The worst cooking task is....

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I think plucking and dressing chickens and ducks is a pain.

Compeared to skining rabbits and young male goats.

If you catch prawns in traps they clean them selves out, in a day, and you can eat the shells.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



tashby


Apr 22, 2010, 8:58 PM

Post #10 of 35 (5616 views)

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Re: [arbon] The worst cooking task is....

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If you catch prawns in traps they clean them selves out, in a day, and you can eat the shells.

Prove it.

Other than that.....I'd say the rest of this crowd is begging for a sous chef (peon?).....and a clean-up crew.

Thanks for playing!

Now, tomorrow I have a bunch of fruit to deal with. I may just You-Tube "How to carve and dice a Mango...."

Slippery are they?

¡Provecho!


mazbook1


Apr 22, 2010, 9:51 PM

Post #11 of 35 (5612 views)

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Re: [tashby] The worst cooking task is....

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tashby, No that "sous chef" is not a peon, he's actually a pinche, however in México, pinche has been corrupted into an adjective rather than a noun, so most Mexicans don't even know the real meaning of the word. Here in México it can be an adjective (not very proper) meaning "worthless" (here in Sinaloa) all the way to a very vulgar adjective usually translated as "fu**ing" in the frontera and in the U.S. Therefore, the correct, i.e., polite, word in México is ayudante, in this case, de cocina.


esperanza

Apr 22, 2010, 10:02 PM

Post #12 of 35 (5608 views)

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Re: [mazbook1] The worst cooking task is....

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I have a pinche who does all the dishes, pots, pans, cleans the stove, and says, "I love you and I love what you cook, so it's worth it." In my defense, I will say that I try to leave the prep kitchen as clean as humanly possible, including no dishes in the sink. But you know what? If I leave a bowl or a pan while I'm in the middle of the prep, she doesn't complain. That's the major reason I always keep it clean.

Although you shoulda been here when I did the seven-course Chinese dinner. I prepped and she washed dishes behind me for four days--and THEN we had the party! Even then, she said it was worth it.

I'm so lucky.




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mazbook1


Apr 22, 2010, 10:34 PM

Post #13 of 35 (5605 views)

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Re: [esperanza] The worst cooking task is....

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esperanza, Now that I think of it, my wife and I do too, but in our case, they are called 4 hijos, although they ARE occasionally refered to as pinche hijos. LOL They never complain, at least openly to us, but their eyes sure light up when we allow them to order pizza delivered or to go to the corner carne asada stand and get the makin's for tacos. Both mean no pots or pans to wash and if they are careful (and sneak a few paper plates from the pantry) no dishes to wash either.


tashby


Apr 23, 2010, 7:44 PM

Post #14 of 35 (5563 views)

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Re: [mazbook1] The worst cooking task is....

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And today my vote goes to.....

.... trying to wrap anything with Kleen Pack*. I practically mummified myself a minute ago.


(For anyone unfamiliar, *Kleen Pack is a Mexican brand of Cling Wrap/Saran Wrap.)


Hound Dog

Apr 26, 2010, 10:19 PM

Post #15 of 35 (5454 views)

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chinagringo


Apr 27, 2010, 6:21 AM

Post #16 of 35 (5437 views)

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Re: [Hound Dog] The worst cooking task is....

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Dawg:

You seem to be having a hard time with posts disappearing! You had, in fact, already made a similar post that may have been deemed an unacceptable response and therefore sent off to the Net cemetery.
Regards,
Neil
Albuquerque, NM



esperanza

Apr 27, 2010, 6:50 AM

Post #17 of 35 (5432 views)

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Re: [Hound Dog] The worst cooking task is....

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Dawg, your 'similar post' and the responses to it had been deleted the last time I looked for them. I don't recall who the respondents were, nor do I recall the content of the responses, but I was surprised to find that those posts were MIA.

Think what you want about me and how I moderate these boards, but remember that there are other moderators who have a 'delete' button.




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Vichil

Apr 27, 2010, 7:41 AM

Post #18 of 35 (5418 views)

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Re: [tashby] The worst cooking task is....

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I think the Kleen pack wrap is in a different category way up there in the impossible things to do..

Ever pepared snails from scratch? That is a real pain. It was my worst task when I was a kid. All the women and girls would get together to prepare them: I will skip the collecting, which as fun, the feeding of corn meal and the washing of hundred sometimes thousands of them. After they were cleaned and boiled we would have a mountain of them on the huge kitchen table and then armed with a needle mounted on a cork we would get each one of them out, , cut the little black part, then wash the shells again with boiling water and vinegar, then stuff each shell with butter garlic and parsley, then put the snail back in then close the whole thing with butter garlic and parsley again and on and on.... I have to say I will not touch a snail as an adult.
We have a lot of them in the garden in Chiapas but I rather they eat my plants than have to prepare even one snail.


Hound Dog

Apr 27, 2010, 9:41 AM

Post #19 of 35 (5402 views)

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Re: [esperanza] The worst cooking task is....

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As the French like to say; "Un oeuf c´est un oeuf."


(This post was edited by Hound Dog on Apr 27, 2010, 9:47 AM)


esperanza

Apr 27, 2010, 11:02 AM

Post #20 of 35 (5386 views)

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Re: [Hound Dog] The worst cooking task is....

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And as we like to say here, 'No me des gato por liebre.'

Abrazos to you both...




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tashby


Apr 27, 2010, 3:10 PM

Post #21 of 35 (5365 views)

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Re: [Vichil] The worst cooking task is....

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Quote
I think the Kleen pack wrap is in a different category way up there in the impossible things to do.


Ha! We even keep the Kleen Pack in the freezer, which someone told us makes it easier to work with. And it does. For about five seconds.....

And yes, I think the Escargot Derby you describe sounds like an enormous pain.


Hound Dog

Apr 29, 2010, 7:57 AM

Post #22 of 35 (5254 views)

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Re: [tashby] The worst cooking task is....

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Today, my vote goes to peeling, and especially, deveining camarones.

OK, Tashby, my first response about cleaning warthog guts in the Namib was meant to be funny whether or not it was actually amusing which is doubtful. As I stated elsewhere, I stole that from Anthony Bourdain´s No Reservations show when he visited Namibia and ate with indigenous Namib tribesmen on a hunt in the desert. A shameless hoax.

Now I am ready to beat the de-veining camerones schtick. Dawg never ate freshly cooked chestnuts until I married into a French family and started stuffing my chickens and other fowl with chestnuts instead of cornbread based stuffing. God, what a pain. You first must cut an "X" into the chestnuts and then parboil them but, as you probably already know, you must peal them while they are still hot and those hot peels are often uncooperative and damned unpleasant to handle. The resulting chicken infused chestnut stuffing makes this task worthwhile but perhaps it is the effort that makes this dish worthwhile.

I do understand the shrimp de-veining thing ever since, while living on Mobile Bay in the 1970s, I decided to surprise my family, who lived farther inland, with fresh shrimp just off the shrimp boat when it docked a la Forrest Gump and I committed to prepare countless pounds of shrimp for a family get-together but I must admit I only de-veined the first pound or so because I became nauseated at the thought of de-veining even one more shrimp for all of eternity. No one in the family seemed to notice that some of the shrimp in their shrimp cocktails and other shrimp dishes were de-veined and some were not de-veined. Actually, once I got over considering the probable constitution of the shrimp vein, I learned to love shrimp veins the way Peter Sellers in Dr. Stranglove, learned to stop worrying and love the vein, er - bomb.

Now, I have never made a tamal and, no doubt, never will since, as I mentioned previously, in San Cristóbal the tradition is that every Saturday night the women of the town open their doors and sell outstanding tamales which I have observed having been made and no thank you to doing that. Too much work. I also noted that any decent tamal claiming to be a tamal contains an enormous amount of lard and only lard will do unless one is kidding oneself so perhaps eating tamales too often is an invitation to stent city (or is it stint?) for us geezers.


(This post was edited by Hound Dog on Apr 29, 2010, 9:10 AM)


Manuel Dexterity

Apr 29, 2010, 8:07 AM

Post #23 of 35 (5245 views)

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Re: [Hound Dog] The worst cooking task is....

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to stent city (or is it stint?)


Yes it is stent. And you might want to consume fresher fowl.


esperanza

Apr 29, 2010, 8:18 AM

Post #24 of 35 (5240 views)

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Re: [Manuel Dexterity] The worst cooking task is....

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"...so fowl and fair a day I have not seen..."

"...so foal and fare a day I have not scene..."

Alas poor Hamlet, I knew thee well...




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Hound Dog

Apr 29, 2010, 9:20 AM

Post #25 of 35 (5229 views)

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Re: [Manuel Dexterity] The worst cooking task is....

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You know, Manuel and Esperanza, I could stop posting and turn you both over to NewInAjijic if the two of you get out of line again. I am trying to train The Princess to type in English and she is responsible for that gaffe but she thinks like a xoloitzquintli and xoloitzquintli type creatures prefer foul fowl, smart asses.

I was just testing the two of you to ascertain your grasp of the English language.


By the way, Manuel; I had The Princess go back and correct her error so your jibe is diminished if not entirely pointless.

Esperanza´s response was more cleverer.


(This post was edited by Hound Dog on Apr 29, 2010, 9:24 AM)
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