Hmmm, thank you, very promising!
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This is our beloved Perfex pepper grinder. She is 38 years old, cast aluminum, adjustable, and going strong. The main dis-advantage is that we have to refill her often. They run $89 new, but there seem to be some used ones available.
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Ooooh, that’s a beauty! 
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Puegot mills are considered the go to for good quality. Range from around $30 to a couple hundred depending on size and style. They pretty much invented the dedicated pepper mill, and were good enough at it that they spun off one of the worlds oldest automobile companies.
I have a small Puegot mill and it produces more pepper, at more consistent sizes than almost any I’ve used. And its lasted a shit ton longer. I think its close to 15 years old at this point.
If you’re looking for a bargain just go to a restaurant supply and grab one of the large commercial grade wooden ones they sell. Out perform most brand name ones for less than 20 bucks.
ETA: The Unicorn Magnum seems to be there best reviewed one.
I have a more traditional, short, wooden one with a metal cap, forget the model name.
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Yeah, this is great advice if you have a place you can get to.
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If there are restaurants near you. There’s a place you can get to, its more an issue of figuring out where the hell they are. Most cities have a restaurant supply district, they tend to be a lot more spread out in suburban or rural places. Though prices tend to be higher the fewer there are around. And you need to know the distinctions.
Restaurant supply stores sell tools, small equipment, and sometimes a certain amount of dried goods. Cleaning supplies and shelf stable food products primarily. Think giant jars of cherries or cartons of cotton candy powder.
Restaurant equipment stores sell 2 ton stoves and other large bits of equipment.
Restaurant Depot is a 30 something state chain of food purveyor. They are wholesale and members only, as will be any other place primarily selling food. If you can get meat there, you can not shop as a member of the public. They carry a limit selection of tools and equipment.
And of course there are online options these days. Websterauntstore is the big one. And they sell both equipment and supplies. But shipping prices suck, erasing much of the savings. BUT most of this stuff is now available on Amazon and a bunch of other sites. So one can identify brand or model numbers on Websteraunt, then find them at slightly higher prices, but at much more affordable shipping.
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That’s absolutely how it started – basically with Greek immigrants who decided to make a moussaka-style meat sauce but make it ‘more American’ by putting it over spaghetti and topping it with lots of cheddar cheese and calling it “chili”. Which is kind of wonderful, because they created a dish from Greek origins and made something 100% uniquely American and unique to the area it’s popular in.
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Wonderful indeed, thanks for the history. (Even if it’s not a dish I’m anxious to try.)
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Ha, another cool story. I do wish they were called Chinese American restaurants.
I imagine you know the origin of fortune cookies too? I’ve heard they were actually created (in Cali) by a Korean immigrant.
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Mary Chung is a local treasure
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Mary Chun appears to have opened in 1981. And from everything I know of the subject American Chinese was already popular up and down the east coast by the 50’s and 60’s and had been popular in New York city and its metro area since before WWII.
IIRC the way it ran was this. The East coast got hit by multiple successive waves of Chinese immigrants in the 20th century after restrictions on immigration from Asia were lightened. American Chinese food had already been some what codified during the 19th century as a derivative of Cantonese food, through west coast Cantonese immigrants, and spread to the US as rail roads allowed those immigrants to land in places like NY.
But those later influxes if immigration were from pretty varied areas of China, and people from different areas went to different cities. NYC got a fresh influx of mostly Cantonese immigrants, especially from Hong Kong fairly early. Boston got a big influx or people from Szechuan a bit later. Those people brought an influx of new, more authentic Chinese dishes that were unfamiliar to Americans who were already on board with American Chinese food.
Dan Dan noodles are a Szechuan dish, one that’s not commonly available outside of the Boston Area/New England. Neither are “Chinese ravioli”, or really pot stickers. Pot stickers are pan fried thin skinned Jiaozi dumplings, the default in the mid Atlantic are boiled or steamed thick skinned ones.
So your basically talking about a place that added some Szechuan inspired dishes to the American Chinese canon, and popularized authentic Szechuan food around Boston. Which drew attention to it nationally. Boston is still pretty much the go to for authentic Szechuan food for US cities, and its surrounds are one of the only places where Szechuan derived foods are the default. NYC didn’t really get any authentic Szechuan food until the last decade, and they’re still not as good as places in Boston.
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So I have an unhappy mutant food problem:
I accidentally fried a plastic pasta hook in my cast iron, it had been left in the pan for a couple minutes and coated maybe 40% of the surface in burnt plastic. The quandary here is whether the pan is trashed or not- my partner does not think it can be saved, while I do. I’ve looked into it some and I think that if I gave it a good sanding, and perhaps roast it for awhile in an outdoor fire, that the trusty pan should be right as rain (albeit, minus 10 years of seasoning, but alas.) This pan is one of our last surviving wedding gifts, so there is a sentimental aspect to this cast iron as well. Am I crazy? Or can this pan be saved?
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I am with you… a good sanding, roast it outside, reseason it.
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That’s the part I’m pushing back on. American Chinese was already widely popular on the East Coast. My mom was regularly eating take out style Chinese in a tiny central main town in the 70’s. And the oldest Chinese restaurant in my tiny ass rural fishing town opened in 1952 (and sadly recently closed).
Most of that proliferation outside of cities was driven by the post war Polynesian/Tiki craze. Which despite the Pacific Island trappings and Tiki drinks was built around Cantonese food, primarily American Chinese.
These post WWII immigrant waves are more responsible for shifting American Chinese Food to a more authentic and varied set of dishes, and how they transitioned from sit down full service places to the default cheap take out only option in most of the US.
If you haven’t seen The Search for General Tso, its a really nice food doc that covers a lot of this subject by narrowing on one particular American Chinese dish and trying to chase it back to an origin point. It covers the modern immigration waves, and the changes they made to the landscape of American food. The business and cultural associations and the new pipelines they built to support new immigrants. And how that system deliberately proliferated Chinese takeout joints and particular dishes across the country. And straight up assaults ideas about authenticity. Particularly the idea that these dishes were primarily the result of sanitising authentic foods for white palettes as opposed to an outgrowth of what Chinese Americans were doing for themselves with the ingredients available.
Probably one of the best pieces of food media to come out in the last decade.
Cast iron is never trashed unless its cracked or heavily pitted.
You should be able to get it off with a paint scraper, or razor blade. If that doesn’t chip it off sanding it off will work. Afterwards strip the pan and reseason, burning season (and plastic) off doesn’t work as well as chemical stripping.
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Okay, I’ve removed my posts. I apologize for my abject ignorance.
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Came here to suggest exactly that, and you’re way ahead of me.
I figure with the tortillas, I don’t need the potatoes along with it. If I did, I figure I’d go whole-hog and just use hashed browns or tater tots.
The slaw that comes with pupusas goes well on these, too.
I had a recipe for scrambled eggs that had this scrambled in with it (“Curry scrambled eggs” IIRC, in the second Vegetarian Epicure book). I was the only one who liked it so I hadn’t made it again. I’ve had a dietitian suggest that protein on top of protein just means a bunch of extra calories.
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I recently got my hands on a fascinating 50s-era Russian cookbook that has the weirdest recipe for scrambled eggs I’ve ever seen; it calls for mixing wheat flour in with the eggs, straining that through mesh, and then baking it in a greased pan. I’m guessing it’d end up something like a Dutch Baby.
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You don’t need to remove them. Its just a conversation about an interesting topic. Frankly I thought you’d get a kick out of the more detailed info. Sorry that it came off as a “shut the fuck up” kinda thing.
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Hello,
I started this topic because I love food both making and eating.
And I love Boing Boing BBS.
There is no wrong question or answer or post.
As long as there is no flaming of an individual for their taste, it’s all good!
Cheers and keep on sharing.
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In fact, if you heat it upside down over an outside fire, the plastic is likely to drop off and you’ll have no scraping to do at all.
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