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I'm No Math Genius.

K

KYHeirloomer

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In fact, I have trouble counting past ten with my shoes on. But....

Out of curiousity, I watched that new FN show, "Five Ingredient Fix." The premise is, you can cook "simple" gourmet meals using only five ingredients.

Now five ingredients doesn't strike me as a particularly low number. But it gets worse. Herbs, spices, and other flavorings are, apparently, not counted as ingredients. Extrapolating out, I would guess that something like a bechamel would only be counted as one (the host made one dish in which she combined cream with creme fraische and counted it as one ingredient). So, for one of her dishes, her 5-count became 8 when I did the counting.

So now I'm wondering if I'm the only mathematically challenged cook around here. Or do you agree that five ingredients, when you leave out herbs and spices, and the individual components of complex blends, is actually a rather high number.
 
I can "accept" (although I don't really agree with it) such recipes if water, salt and pepper are not counted as an ingredient - but trying to get away with posting a recipe for Pfeffernusse Cookies as a 5-ingredient recipe is not my way of counting. (this is just as an example)

ingredient #1 - flour, salt, soda, 10X for dusting
ingredient #2 - brown sugar, white sugar, honey, molasses, extract
ingredient #3 - margarine
ingredient #4 - eggs
ingredient #5 - cardamom, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, cinnamon, pepper, etc.

Don't forget - computers and calculators have taken over the brain cells today - many canNOT count.
 
KYHeirloomer said:
In fact, I have trouble counting past ten with my shoes on. But....

Out of curiousity, I watched that new FN show, "Five Ingredient Fix." The premise is, you can cook "simple" gourmet meals using only five ingredients.

Now five ingredients doesn't strike me as a particularly low number. But it gets worse. Herbs, spices, and other flavorings are, apparently, not counted as ingredients. Extrapolating out, I would guess that something like a bechamel would only be counted as one (the host made one dish in which she combined cream with creme fraische and counted it as one ingredient). So, for one of her dishes, her 5-count became 8 when I did the counting.

So now I'm wondering if I'm the only mathematically challenged cook around here. Or do you agree that five ingredients, when you leave out herbs and spices, and the individual components of complex blends, is actually a rather high number.
Click to expand...

I don't watch the food network anymore. It has just gotten too bad for me to waste my time.
 
Brook I think it's a laugh when they say five ingredients but that doesn't include the spices, and seasonings etc... to my way of thinking that is misleading...becasue all spices, flavorings, etc. are ingredients...even the list of ingredients on the labels count spices and flavorings, and even food coloring as ingredients! What the heck is wrong with these food network folks? I think they got ahold of some idiots:D and now those idiots are getting paid the "big bucks" to just be idiots!!!
 
Brook- you really got me thinking and remembering back...

I recall years ago working as a line-cook at a busy restaurant that often had food cost problems, as well as trouble with staff pilferage. The elderly, otherwise talented GM was hell-bent on finding out just where/who/how food/profit was disappearing to. He was often spotted "spying" on staff, looking over their shoulders as they took breaks and ate the staff meals (that servers ordered on dining room tickets and paid half-price for menu items- the cooks ate free- part of our compensation), spending time in the employee locker room- evidently possibly checking coat pockets, etc.

Someone cornered him and blew a fuse. It was a waitress- she claimed harrassment and went ballistic. She claimed the GM was only checking certain lockers and coats- ranted & raved that he never seemed to check any of the male employees' out at all (only males we had were we cooks).

Well, this GM knew his stuff and had worked around F&B staffs for decades. His reply to her was "Cooks never eat high-dollar stuff! They are happy to eat fries, make themselves eggs & toast, pick at warm rolls & butter, etc. all night long... But WAITRESSES! THEY'RE the PRIMA-DONNAS! They steal lobster, shrimp and steak every chance they get! So hell no I'm not watching the male cooks w/ the same eagle-eye that I'm watching YOU with!"

As it turned out, this waitress and a bar-tender were both canned a month later for stealing.

Anyway- where I was going w/ all this- in relation to your initial remarks, is: As someone who cooked commercially for ages- and as someopne certainly familiar w/ the finest of the fine, as far as food goes- I tend to be a very basic eater. I'll do it up fancy for friends and family- but when it's just me? i can be happy with a bag of microwave popcorn, or a dish of cottage cheese and canned peaches for supper! So to me? Five ingredients? ...is just that- FIVE INGREDIENTS! (For instance- your example of a bechamel, to ME, isn't one ingredient- you gotta count the milk, the butter, the flour, the salt, the pepper and the nutmeg! (And also the clove-studded onion- if your personal rendition of the recipe happens to include those!)
 
My very point, Kevin. To me, if it goes into the dish, then it's an ingredient.

Which is why the very concept is a shuck---typical of the way FN has been moving the past few years. They'd rather create a star by coming up with a make-believe concept and putting in somebody with no apparent qualifications.

Have you seen, for instance, that "Cooking For Real" show? Sunny somebody or other, who seems to have modeled her personality on Rachael Ray. The way they promoted the show was:

"She's a real Air Force vet.
She's a real DJ
She's a real food lover"

Wow! Really hard core cooking credentials there, wouldn't you say. :rolleyes:

I also disagree witht the idea that "simple" has anything much to do with the number of ingredients. A tossed salad can have a dozen or more ingredients, but there's nothing complex about it. Complexity is measured by the techniques and proceedures needed to complete the dish.

You remember my seafood lollipops? By anyone's measurement, that would be considered a complex dish to prepare. Yet, using FN's method of counting, it only uses 6 ingredients. I could easily drop one of the items, and then it would be a "five ingredient fix." But it still wouldn't be simple by any means.

And, for the record, the way I count there are 14 ingredients in the lollipops, not counting any sauce that may be used with them.
 
"....a bechamel, to ME, isn't one ingredient- you gotta count the milk, the butter, the flour, the salt, the pepper and the nutmeg! (And also the clove-studded onion- if your personal rendition of the recipe happens to include those!) "

My impression, to put a point on it, was even worse. They would say that a Mornay sauce only included two ingredients: bechamel and parmesan cheese. Or maybe not? If a mixture of cream and creme fraiche is just one ingredient, then the Mornay might be counted the same way.
 
I would count spices and sauces as an ingredient's but that's just me. I just bought ginger and Worcestershire's sauce for Mama's recipe tangy beef stir fry and some peach jam for a chicken dish I'm making if it goes in the pot it's ingredient's to me.


I'm going to now ask you a dumb question What is bechamel? Cookie :)
 
Cookie- no, no, no... no such thing as a dumb question...

"Bechamel" is the French name for a classc sauce which many in the U.S. call "white sauce" or somtimes "supreme sauce". It's basically milk thickened w/ roux (cooked flour and butter )or a burre manie (uncooked flour and butter) and seasoned simply w/ sometimes just S&P, and sometimes nutmeg, and an onion-studded clove. (KYH also menions "mornay sauce"- which is one of my favorites. Mornay is simply bechamel w/ parmesan cheese whisked into it)

A quick sauce course: Chef Antonine Careme is one of the god-fathers of the modern kitchen (along w/ Aufuste Escoffier) who lived in the early 19th century. Careme invented the idea of the "Mother Sauces". Basically, all sauces are derivatives- or "children of" these five main sauces or "Mother" sauces, which are: bechamel, veloute, espagnole, hollandaise and tomato sauces. All sauces/gravies today tend to be offspring of these five basic classic sauces... (trivial, needless things learned during my 2 semesters of culinary school- and my apprenticeship many moons ago!)
 
I'd have to make one "correction" to Kevin's short course.

Careme and Escoffier are the Godfathers of classic French cooking. Ultimately, one could say that Careme invented it and Escoffier codified it.

However, where I quibble is in calling them the Godfathers of modern cooking, which they're not. Classic French cooking is based heavily on liaisoned sauces which enrobe the food. Modern sauces are more like broths; they do not enrobe the food (indeed, the food most often just sits in them) and they do not use liaisons.

Modern sauces, particularly in the 1980s and '90s were based on butter and cream. More recently, even they have been replaced by reductions and jus.

A liaison, btw, is a binding agent that causes other ingredients to thicken and stick to each other. Flour, various starches, eggs are among the more familiar liaisons.

The other trend affecting modern food, and helping to define it, is the inclusion of ethnic cuisines. With the possible exception of Italian, classic French cooking acknowldeged no debt to other cuisines. Nowadays we totally embrace them.
 
>...post saber-tooth tiger ribs<

Saber tooth tiger ribs with my pomegranite barbeque sauce would be world famous---if we could still get the ribs. :p
 
Thank you both for all the information. I'm really glad I asked that question on "Bechamel" & now I know about other types of creams & sauces too. Thanks again, Cookie :)
 
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