emilly | (no subject)

from craftzine's review of savory baking:

"This is great for the intermediately skilled home cook looking to expand his/her repertoire of favorites. The tart I made required that I know how to toast walnuts (dry in a pan is how we did it), separate eggs (crack the whole thing into a bowl and pick up the yolk with your fingers), handle fancy cheese (remove the foil but let the food processor handle the rind), and work with delicate dough (I used a big cake mover to transfer it to the tart pan)."

Really? separating eggs is a skill for an intermediate cook? Toasting walnuts is not a beginner skill? Using a "big cake mover" is a remarkable achievement? This is a dough one makes in the food processor and then kneads - and then the recipe points out you can patch the dough with scraps. Yes. They are all identifiers of a delicate dough. One that needs special tools.

Remove the foil from fancy cheese. Goddamn. The reason she doesn't specify you should remove the shell from the walnuts is that the recipe only asks for walnut pieces.

Man, I must have been an advanced cook when I was nine! I'd never even heard of risotto, but I could separate eggs!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

More to the point, aren't there easier ways to separate eggs than by picking up the yolk with your fingers? But what would I know? I'm only a beginner.

The traditional way - breaking it over a bowl and letting the white fall while you try and hang on to the yolk - can actually be quite difficult, because the shell is sharp. I tend to break the egg into my hand and let the white fall between my fingers. I think, if i'd broken it into a bowl, i'd have used a spoon, but hey. maybe there weren't any clean spoons.

Wow, I must be awesome then as I can remove BOTH foil and cling wrap from cheese :-)

...wow. I guess it's because, you know, walnuts and fancy cheese, beginners obvs never make anything beyond canned soup and toasties. Also, what is a 'big cake mover'?

a cake server? a big one?

If you haven't had someone show you how to do things before then how do you know? Tasks that seem obvious to you aren't necessarily obvious to eveyone.

I've made an appointment to see a dietian because my eating habits are so poor. Someone commented that surely I don't need someone to tell me how to eat healthy. You know what, I do, because I was never taught how.

You don't think you would known to take the foil off the fancy cheese?

These are tasks that were listed as intermediate, not beginner. Someone did show me how to separate an egg. That was when I was a beginner. Then I moved on.