Daisy Cooks with Daisy Martinez

Anybody else catching this on WYCC, WYIN or WTTWDT?

She seems to be Puerto Rican and her show varies with different Latin cuisines from different areas.

I not only enjoy the show, but when I actually go and COOK some of the stuff from her show, seems like I always make it again, and soon.

This show has given me a love for flavors I wasn't messing with before, bless her.

But, I still don't know if I'll ever find ajicitos dulces anywhere, or culantro....

Any other fans?

Oh, and I think FOODTV really missed the boat with her, they need to try to cover more different cuisines, and my hubby says Daisy is hot.

Nancy

Nancy Sexton wrote:Any other fans?

Nancy,

Steve Z is a fan

Enjoy,
Gary

I have to say that I'm a fan as well. Her recipes are great home-style dishes. Her recipe for making rice is now standard in my house. I've tried various recipes/methods for making basic yellow rice for years & Daisy's is spot-on.

Nancy Sexton wrote:But, I still don't know if I'll ever find ajicitos dulces anywhere, or culantro....

Well, you need to go to a Puerto Rican market. Check out the link for one that I visited with Antonius (Malus):

http://lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=60568#60568

They have both aji dulce and culantro (as well as Antonius's beloved El Yucateco jalapeño salsa).

Amata

As I've mentioned elsewhere on the board, I like Daisy's show and, more importantly, her cooking. Obviously, her greatest strength is with Puerto Rican traditional dishes as well as with her own more inventive stuff. She regularly includes dishes from Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America , as well as from the various regions of Spain (incl. Catalonia) and with those she interprets and adapts but generally to my mind in good ways. She is, of course, a New Yorker and her husband is Italian; not surprisingly then, one sees occasionally traces of Italian influence in her cooking as well.

All in all, I think she is a fine cook and her manner on screen is engaging without being a distraction or irritation, as is the case with all of the not very fine cooks that FN parades before us these days.

Antonius

She is, of course, a New Yorker and her husband is Italian; not surprisingly then, one sees occasionally traces of Italian influence in her cooking as well.

....not to mention that she worked for Lidia Bastianich for quite some time. Even though she comes across as being a great deal giddier than Chef Bastianich, her chops are solid. I hugely appreciated hearing her talk about which olive oil grades to use for what recently, noting that EVOO shouldn't be used for sauteeing, as it changes the chemical composition of the oil and destroys its integrity, not to mention its flavor. Pure Lidia - and in stark contrast with virtually everyone at FN anymore. (I'm looking at YOU, Rachael Ray.)

sundevilpeg wrote:

She is, of course, a New Yorker and her husband is Italian; not surprisingly then, one sees occasionally traces of Italian influence in her cooking as well.

....not to mention that she worked for Lidia Bastianich for quite some time. Even though she comes across as being a great deal giddier than Chef Bastianich, her chops are solid. I hugely appreciated hearing her talk about which olive oil grades to use for what recently, noting that EVOO shouldn't be used for sauteeing, as it changes the chemical composition of the oil and destroys its integrity, not to mention its flavor. Pure Lidia - and in stark contrast with virtually everyone at FN anymore. (I'm looking at YOU, Rachael Ray.)

I used to think this as well but Batali uses extra virgin for everything and says that even though you lose some of the flavor when you cook with it, you still end up with more flavor than if you had started with a lesser oil. He even deep fries with EV, like they do in Rome (according to Batali).

Maybe this should be it's own thread. I didn't mean to hijack Daisy's thread.

viaChgo wrote:I used to think this as well but Batali uses extra virgin for everything and says that even though you lose some of the flavor when you cook with it, you still end up with more flavor than if you had started with a lesser oil. He even deep fries with EV, like they do in Rome (according to Batali).

Maybe this should be it's own thread. I didn't mean to hijack Daisy's thread.

It's a question of money. You can use extra virgin oil for frying but in doing so, you lose many of the chemical qualities that make extra virgin olive oil so good tasting and so good for your health. In a certain sense then, you're wasting some of the money you spent to purchase in the first place oil that has those particular chemical qualities.

I pretty much only use olive oil in my kitchen, though occasionally I have peanut oil or some other oil on hand. For pan-frying, I generally have to use extra virgin oil because that's all I have, though it is somewhat wasteful from the perspective noted above; nevertheless, I like the flavour it imparts and that's my way of cooking: fairly high heat, small amount of oil, and quick cooking keeps the waste down and the taste up. If I know I'm going to be deep-frying, I won't waste that much high quality oil and use regular olive oil instead, which is fine and has a nice flavour and should cost a lot less (or else I use peanut oil or some blend) . Regular old olive oil is a blend of processed olive oil with some extra virgin to give it flavour.

In my family, both sides of the ocean, for traditional cooking we use olive oil for almost everything, except deep-frying, where we use it sometimes (certain deep-fried items demand it for flavour), but then esp. the lower grade, basic 'olive oil' (the aforementioned commercial blend of processed olive oil and extra virgin); we also use other oils or mixtures of oils. But we are well aware that this is an aspect of our cooking that has changed due to health concerns and better economic situation. Lard was regularly used all across Italy (insofar as one could afford it), as elsewhere in western Europe, outside of the butter zones, and in the immigrant neighbourhoods in the US in the 20th century -- till after WWII -- that was still the case too. A great many traditional dishes, including lots from areas which have always used olive oil as a basic cooking fat, are made -- if one cares to do things in the traditional way -- with lard.

Batali is right that (some) people use extra virigin even for deep frying but he gives the very wrong impression that everyone always does that or at least everyone who knows what they're doing in the kitchen does: that's bull, of course, but Mario's historical and cultural asides all need to be taken with a grain of sea salt (I think he is a fine chef but amazingly sloppy and frequently wrong with his historical and cultural comments). In any event, good olive oil is relatively expensive and pretty much always has been, so aside from by and for rich people, except in certain limited settings (on a farm with its own olive groves but even then only for the higher-ups), oil was and is used with an eye on the pocket book.

Getting back to Daisy, my impression was that she claims olive oil is no good for real frying and therefore uses vegetable oils with a higher smoking point. I thought she didn't use olive oil for frying on account of its alleged lack of suitability and in that advanced the widespread misconception about olive oil. Or maybe she's revised her view; I do remember her recommending not using olive oil for frying on account of smoking point in some show.

Antonius

If anyone is looking for a new source for cooking and travel shows,
I recently discovered "Create" Channel 242 on Comcast cable.
It regualry airs episodes of Lydia's Family Table, America's Test
Kitchen, Charlie Trotter sessions, Rick Steve's Europe and Burt Wolf.

baroness of beef wrote:If anyone is looking for a new source for cooking and travel shows,
I recently discovered "Create" Channel 242 on Comcast cable.
It regualry airs episodes of Lydia's Family Table, America's Test
Kitchen, Charlie Trotter sessions, Rick Steve's Europe and Burt Wolf.

b,

You're right; 'Create' is a nice alternative. And don't they also have Daisy on sometimes as well?

A

A,

Penso di si

the Baroness

A--

I encourage you to get back to your roots, as have I. A couple of bucks will buy you an outstanding tub of lard at C. Leon, Ashland at Blackhawk. I keep mine in the fridge. It goes a long way and it lasts months before turning. Really, the hydrogenated stuff from Armour and whatever is horrible, but this stuff is great. Sure, it's rustic and everything I use it on ends up tasting a little like pork, but that's a plus for eggs, rices (Cuban, paella), savory pastries, beans, corndogs, turkeys, etc.

b,



*

j-b,

Back in the early 90's, I was doing lard pretty regularly, e.g., for Neapolitan ragù... I still like my beans with cotenna (got some cooling in the fridge at the moment), but now that I'm an old... a more mature person, I guess I've given in to the health concerns... But, while I do love lard, I really really love olive oil and find it endlessly fascinating and satisfying stuff.

I'm a bit envious, though, of your two-way link to the Spanish Empire, via Caserta and Cuba... I have no doubt that your kids are eating really well...

Long live the traditions! Long live Charles V! Long live lard (and olive oil)!

A

Getting back to Daisy....seen in Trib's Good Eating today :

"Latino Chefs of Chicago" Event

Kaleidoscope
800 W. Superior St.

Sample tastes from area restaurants and meet Daisy Martinez
of the PBS show "Daisy Cooks!" during a signing of her new
cookbook, "Daisy Cooks! Latin Flavors That Will Rock Your World."

Aug. 24: 5:30 p.m. - 9 p.m.

Price: $75. Proceeds benefit March of Dimes
Phone: 312-596-4717

She's back.

eatchicago wrote:She's back.

That's great news. I've been getting tired of watching reruns on Create.

Boy, Food Network isn't exactly going overboard promoting this one - I'd actually have watched this today, in that I was awakened at 8 by a snow blower (a harbinger of things to come, at that point). While I don't watch Food Network nearly as much as I did back in the day, I think it's quite odd that they have not run any promo spots for it that I've seen, either in the Weekend morning group format or individually, particularly for a show that I understand was created for Ms. Martinez for the FN's biggest cash cow, Rachael Ray. Strange. Also strange: each of the six initial shows ordered is being run once, and only once. Hmmmm.....

And even stranger: FN's half-assed committment to programming that might appeal to the exploding Latino audience. Baffling, to say the least. I'd be promoting the living daylights out of this, especially considering how long "Daisy Cooks" has been running on PBS - there's already a good-sized pre-built audience.