calling this place the "culinary arts" section is like calling a brothel "la villa de amore"

anyway to stay on topic, feel free to chat in this thread about all the various dishes you love to garnish with ketchup

I only eat hotdogs with ketchup.
I don't like anything else on it.

Same with fries.

I think catsup is too sweet to use on its own for pretty much anything.



Jesus invented mustard for a reason.. hotdogs.

The great thing about this forum is that it is not exclusive. You don't need to be a 4 star chef to post here, in fact this opens up a door for people with less experience in the kitchen to ask questions and learn something! Some of us are professionally trained, some are in college and have a low budget, it doesn't matter! The reason we gather here is to have fun and enjoy some food.

when in cook sichuan chilli prawns for white people/people not from sichuan its a good idea to use a bit of ketchup

he seems to have arrived with bad timing.



the best foods arent from 5 star restaurants

Slow Braised Veal Osso Buco and Crispy Calamari Cassoulet are exceptions.
please dont cut down low budget foods because they bring innovation and inspiration for better foods as well.



e/ and sorry for all the bakers but i dont consider baking an art....
its either:

1) making a cake and decorating it with colored frosting...
2) making dough, throwing in ingredients and cooking



culinary art is 14oz ribeye drizzled with strawberry honey habanero sauce with sides of whipped sweet potatoes and crisped walla walla onions



just IMHO

This post was edited by NerdrageIMO on Jul 10 2012 07:56am

you dont bake much, do you?

thats like saying cooking is just throwing a ribeye on the grill and putting some sauce on it and sides with it. its an extreme over-simplification.


ive heard it said that for every ten good chefs, theres one good baker, and i would agree. a lot of baking may 'just' be putting some stuff in a dough and baking it, (baking it, not cooking it. cooking is with water.) but making those doughs is a lot more exacting than cooking. you can 'wing it' a lot more easily in cooking than in baking. mix a little too long cooking, and for most stuff its no difference at all. mix too long baking and you can totally ruin whatever youre doing, beyond repair. ive seen it firsthand. i almost never measure when cooking, but when baking i almost always do, because the wrong proportions and it wont come out right. not too many proportions to worry about making a steak or whipped sweet potatoes...

also, making flowers and stuff from frosting IS art. its much more about artistic ability than cooking or baking ability, similar to garde-manger. carving fruits is artistic ability, not cooking ability. same for cake decorating.

This post was edited by ReturnFormer on Jul 10 2012 04:53pm

A line cook could make that.

Baking is science + art.

Cooking is wrist and knife techniques.

'd hard



Agree with pretty much everything here but it of course depends on what you are making. If I'm just making a chocolate cake at home I don't worry too much about measurements, I know how the cake batter is supposed to feel and look and also how the cake itself should be when finished.
However when we baked a loaf of bread for our shop in bakery school we wanted perfection. Measurements must be close to exactly right, you need to know how to handle the dough right, how to knead the dough to get the right form, how long it should ferment and bake, etc etc

I'm not going to argue cooking vs baking but neither is easy if you want good results.