(no subject)

[camwyn]

Well, I think I've found out why the cornbread I made for Thanksgiving tasted weird and a little gritty even to me. I was unaware at the time that Goya's Harina de Maiz was not, in fact, the same thing as ordinary cornmeal packaged for the Latino market. This is no one's fault but my own and is not going to happen again. On the other hand I am probably going to go and buy some from a nearby store anyway, because I have some recipes for making tortillas and corn chips and they call for masa harina, and I am told that this is what that Goya product is- flour of corn that's been treated with lime water as for hominy. I'm pretty sure they have this at Stop and Shop, and I know I saw a bag of Maseca at Target the last time I was there (although I am told that this produces a somewhat different result), and East Boston seems to have a good-sized Hispanic population, so I can probably find something there, too, assuming I figure out where to look.

I'm a bit stupid when it comes to new neighborhoods and stores sometimes. Back when I was first learning anything about Chinese cooking I would go to Asian markets in Parsippany with Ken Hom's beginner's guide to Chinese cooking in my hand because it had photographs of the specific brands and labels he recommended I use. I'm not looking to learn any specific ethnicity's or culture's cooking today; I just want to make my own nachos, starting from the corn and working my way up. I'll probably be using the nacho cheese sauce recipe from How To Cook Like Your Grandmother as long as I'm at it.

Comments

[ultharkitty]

Oooh, nacho-making from scratch sounds awesome. Good luck with that, and thankyou for linking to How To Cook Like Your Grandmother. Totally bookmarking that.

[ymfaery]

Ken Hom's beginner's guide to Chinese cooking

..I hope they were good pictures. Because a friend and I discovered one day while browsing B&N's cookbook section that books on ethnic cuisine not written by a person of that ethnicity can get things hilariously wrong or weird, and Hom doesn't sound especially Chinese (unless it's a romanization I'm not familiar with). ;)

[camwyn]

Nah, he was born in the States to Cantonese immigrant parents.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/chefs/ken_hom

[ymfaery]

So basically a romanization I'm not familiar with. :)

(And wow, that crispy roast pork belly recipe looks interesting. Too bad the kitchen doesn't have room to hang things. I think.)