What's the weakest corner of your repertoire?

[Jenise]

Mine is, unequivocably, appetizers. I've said this for years and it has never changed. I am somehow flummoxed by little bites to pass with a glass of champagne. I have very few go-to's in this department and often just resort to little artichoke or smoked fish crostinis because I can't seem to come up with anything else. And of course, one always needs a new item because you don't want to serve the same appie to the same guests twice. I don't do dips or that kind of thing--they're way to Leave it to Beaver for my tastes, and I can't stand how disgusting they look after even a small handful of people have got into them. Spinach dip in a bread bowl? The ridiculously overused 7 Layer Dip (it isn't even that good). At parties, I won't touch them.

Here's a recipe for courgette garlic bites I just got from a friend on a French cooking Facebook page I frequent. For awhile I belonged to this and one that was more West Coast U.S. based and I found I have a lot more in common with European cooks than American and eventually dropped out of the latter. They look terrific in her photos and will be both easy and popular with guests some day. I am already certain I'll get a lot of mileage out of this--in fact I don't know why I haven't done something like it before. Tasty, attractive, and best of all: vegetarian.

Courgette garlic bites
1 cup shredded courgette
1 egg
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup panko breadcrumbs
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 teaspoon dried basil
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
Salt and pepper to taste
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Shred the courgette and squeeze out excess moisture using a clean towel.
In a bowl, combine the shredded courgette, egg, Parmesan cheese, breadcrumbs, minced garlic, basil, oregano, salt and pepper.
Shape the mixture into small balls, about the size of a tablespoon, and place them on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
Bake in the preheated oven for 15-20 minutes, or until the bites are golden and firm. (Towards the end I usually flip them over).

I need more like this.

But you guys: what do you consider the weakest part of your cooking arsenal?

Jenise, here is a recipe I used a lot for gatherings, it was well-received, easy to make, and pretty.
https://whatscookingamerica.net/karenca ... tizeri.htm

I also looked through my huge collection of appetizers, all rated excellent, or very good. Many had mayo, cheese spreads, smoked fish, shrimp, and a huge amount served as a dip. I usually smear on baguette slices as I like that idea better than having to trust folks at a party not to double dip. Ugh! I have two huge binders full of recipes, most are marked with such things as, "took to Jim and Jan's party, everyone loved, many asked for recipe". I know you do not like mayo, not sure about white cheese spreads, but they seem to be popular. So not sure but you most likely will have to come up with some new ideas. Recently, I served an array of crackers that come from Rustic Bakery in Petaluma, CA with three different cheeses, a chili fig jam, red grapes, and Boursin herb cheese in the foil packet, and it was a hit. Easy, pretty. Because I knew a favorite of someone, I added it to the mix, low-fat Gallo sliced salami, served taco style with Bruno's mild peppers inside. That was gone in no time.

I like doing amuse bouches as many can be made well ahead of time.

Nothing like small gougeres with a bubbly to start a dinner!

Baking. I doubt that I have ever kneaded a dough in my life. The closest I get is buying a ball of pizza dough from a good nearby shop and rolling it out.

I'm with you on this one Jeff. I dislike working with flour but with kids and a husband, I made my share of cakes, cookies scones etc. I don't have to do that anymore.

Baking for me, too. I can do Chinese dumplings, steamed buns, and other dim sum-type stuff. But I'm no good at cakes, bread, and whatnot.

-Paul W.

Yeah, I'll admit to baking as well. It is more like chemistry class where things usually need to be exact or you don't get the results you are after. Pretty hard to fudge something like croissants or a soufflé and just hope it will work out well for you.

Funny, but I'd say that baking is less like chemistry than most cooking. There are all sorts of variables such as ambient humidity that have to be taken into account if you want a good outcome. To bake reliably you need to develop an intuitive feel for how much or little water to use today (compared to what you did last week), and how to knead a dough until it looks and feels right. And so on. Big learning curve.

-Paul W.

I want to distinguish between stuff like cookies (which are pretty easy) and risen doughs (which require that aforementioned learning curve).

It even extends to what one might call machine-assisted dough preparation. I bought a Popeil Pasta Maker. This is essentially an adult edition of the Play-Doh Fun Factory. You put flour, eggs, and whatnot in the machine's bowl and turn it on. It mixes and kneads the dough. At the appropriate moment you turn the on-off dial the other way and the machine extrudes the dough through a die to make pasta of the desired shape. What is the appropriate moment? "When it looks right." The machine's instructions have a written description of what the dough should look right when it's ready to be extruded, but the machine came with a VHS tape containing a 15-minute infomercial in which Ron Popeil demonstrates how to use the machine. The video has several close-up shots of what the dough looks like at the critical moment. Most useful. Fortunately that infomercial is online at YouTube--I long ago lost that VHS video tape.

-Paul W.

Yeah, I'll admit to baking as well. It is more like chemistry class where things usually need to be exact or you don't get the results you are after. Pretty hard to fudge something like croissants or a soufflé and just hope it will work out well for you.

Did somebody say Chemistry class? One of the easiest ways to improve your baking skills is to invest in a kitchen scale. Look for baking recipes that use weight rather than volume to measure out ingredients, as volumes vary considerably with weather, etc. Bonus tip: you can use your kitchen scale to weigh postage and skip a trip to the post office, for those of you who still use snail mail from time to time.

We have a couple of scales, Mark. Metric for our normal uses, non-metric for older recipes I have on hand and also current ones from the minority countries that still use old measures (Myanmar, Liberia and the US, last time I checked.

You comment on weight vs volume is telling, though. Take any material like flour that can have a range of particle size and depending on how you measure, weight or volume, you can come uo with different amounts. A cup of coarse grind sure isn't the same weight as a cup of fine grind, which is why I prefer weight to volume measurement but there seems to be a definite lack of consistency in units especially when you have old recipes - 'take a lump of butter the size of a walnut and add it to a gill of yeast and a wineglass full of juice..." I've even seen references to a knob of something but have no idea how big a knob is. And FWIW, our measuring cups were bigger than yours - by 20% IIRC (I have never understood why a nation that seems to delight in having everything bigger than any other country used smaller measures. Not only are the number of ounces in pints, quarts, and gallons all larger in the imperial system, the size of one fluid ounce is also different. Talk about confusion!

That's because, after you lot came back in 1812, we decided we had enough of 'aluminium' and the extra 'u' in 'color', and anything else imperial.

As to why we haven't gone metric... darn if I know. I remember, as a kid, I was told it was coming soon. 1970. No doubt.

The only thing bad I can find to say about the metric system is that the base units are a little clumsy. Meters are too big for everyday things (e.g., only really tall people are two whole meters). Grams are too small for everyday things (which is why everybody talks about kilos). A minor quibble compared to the silliness of all the unit conversions, the use of volume for weight, etc.

The only thing bad I can find to say about the metric system is that the base units are a little clumsy. Meters are too big for everyday things (e.g., only really tall people are two whole meters). Grams are too small for everyday things (which is why everybody talks about kilos). A minor quibble compared to the silliness of all the unit conversions, the use of volume for weight, etc.

Well remember that metric was created by the French (1795) and anyone that has navigated the traffic circle at the Arc de Triomphe will attest that they can be a little idiosyncratic at times. As someone that has tools for metric, Imperial, and at least three different threading options to work on cars, I can say that I wish such things had been standardized long ago.

If you want to see clumsy standard units, take a look at electronics. The farad and henry are ludicrously large.

-Paul W.