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17 December 2009
CILANTRO Is it still a topic MetaChat does not do well?
Last night I experienced an AWEsome version of cilantro. It was a cranberry sauce; but it was raw fresh organic cranberries, whizzed in a food processor with CILANTRO, honey, lime juice, and cumin. OMG. I ate it on crackers, on cheese, on pork roast, on everything. Nom.
I recently had a cilantro conversion. I don't know how it happened, but one day I was eating some Thai chicken wings sprinkled with cilantro and suddenly it switched from soapy menace to OMG YUM! Age does strange things to the palate. And now I want to eat that thing that Miko's talking about.
I made Gourmet's cheddar biscuit (US) topped chicken pot pie recipe a few days ago, replaced the parsley with cilantro, and served it to my wife, who claims not to like cilantro. She threw me down on the table and made mad passionate pot pie love to me right there.
...still waiting for an anti-cilantrist to point to the link in the post and say "so the newspaper substituted 'cement' for 'cilantro' in the recipe? sounds about right". I can't do that because I like cilantro, in moderation. (The only things I enjoy in excess are roasted garlic and some white cheeses - muenster, jack, provolone, havarti [all available in 2-pound packages of slices at Costco which I can consume all by myself in less than a wek if unrestrained], but I digress.)
I love cilantro, but to my palate, just a hint of it overpowers other flavors. The same with celery. I stopped using both for a long time. Then I got the idea to combine the two in spicy dishes, and for me, the combination of cilantro, celery and chili (especially chinese chili paste) work just fine.
I just made some Indian food and covered the whole top with cilantro. I love it on Indian, Thai and Mexican dishes. Plus it's a good way to ward off my sister and claim a plate or a brownie.
Kangaroo - I don't have a recipe, because my friend that made it is not the kind of cook who uses recipes much (though he is a great cook). He improvised it, and then he had had it stored in the freezer for ages, so he really couldn't remember much except the ingredients. However, I think if you just did the blendering of a pound of cranberries with, say, half a bunch of mostly-stemmed cilantro to start, that would create the base, and then you could do the seasonings to taste. I plan to experiment with it too. It was all really finely ground, by the way. The texture was almost like small caviar.
So the newspaper substituted 'cement' for 'cilantro' in the recipe? Sounds about right.
Would it be bad to add a Tbsp of kerosene to the next potluck dish I make, in order to help educate the non-believers? After all, "It tastes so clean and fresh!" Or maybe I'll whack myself in the nose, and scatter a chiffonade of bloody kleenex bits over the dish. If they don't like it, they can just pick it off, right? "It's so colorful!"
photo by splunge
photo by TheophileEscargot
photo by Kronos_to_Earth
photo by ethylene
