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J. Kenji López-Alt is Seattle’s reluctant powerful food influencer

seattletimes.com

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Re: J. Kenji López-Alt is Seattle’s reluctant powerful food influencer

#81

Post by ethbr0 »

rootusrootus wrote: post #79
ethbr0 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watched for the first time just now. I love the PoV videos! It's really helpful to see just what the hands are doing, and no cuts. The biggest gaps in written IMHO tend to be (a) things people do but don't realize they do, (b) things people do but assume everyone else already knows, (c) things people do more efficiently but don't think to mention (obvious example: use a cook time break to clean prep-ware).

> I love the PoV videos! I would much prefer a stable camera video. The PoV videos are unwatchable for me unless I take dramamine.

Desktop, laptop, or mobile? I was watching on mobile, so had a stable reference for most of my field of view.

Re: J. Kenji López-Alt is Seattle’s reluctant powerful food influencer

#82

Post by GloriousKoji »

prpl wrote: post #15

Kenji is very good but also highly opinionated, often bordering on food snob. That’s fine, he’s often right but not always. I think that feeds into this problem: People following him will seek out “the best/perfect XYZ” which he looks for based on his own obsession at the time (smashed burgers, XLB, detroit pizza, etc…). If you watch old episodes of Jacque and Julia you will see how they could easily and happily disa…

> If you watch old episodes of Jacque and Julia you will see how they could easily and happily disagree on what makes something special, and there is nuance there.

One distinct event that stuck out to me was when they were cooking kale. I think it was going into a quiche or something but that didn't matter. It was such a perfect dichotomy and juxtaposition, the French man was preparing it using the contemporary American method of sautéing it directly in a pan touting the benefits of nutrition retention while the American woman was for the traditional French method of boiling it and nutrition be damned for the sake of it being less bitter.'

I miss programs like that, now when there's more than one chef it's a full on ESPN level competition.

Re: J. Kenji López-Alt is Seattle’s reluctant powerful food influencer

#83

Post by UncleMeat »

dataviz1000 wrote: post #18
Exuma wrote: post #16

Kenji AKA Peel ginger with a spoon!!!

What type of savage doesn't peel ginger with a spoon? Learned that from a Tibetan making momos. He would then use the side of a clever to crush the ginger before mincing.

I actually don't.

Ginger is incredibly cheap and comes in quantities larger than I need for almost all preparations. The loss that comes from cutting it into a rectangular prism is worth the time for me, since I'm going to be throwing some of it in the trash anyway.

Re: J. Kenji López-Alt is Seattle’s reluctant powerful food influencer

#84

Post by Camas »

annexrichmond wrote: post #44

I lost a lot of respect for Kenji after this incident: López-Alt wrote that “it hasn’t happened yet, but if you come to my restaurant wearing a MAGA cap, you aren’t getting served, same as if you come in wearing a swastika, white hood, or any other symbol of intolerance and hate.” He added, “MAGA hats are like white hoods except stupider because you can see exactly who is wearing them.” Both tweets have since been de…

I do tend to enjoy his content more when he doesn't mention politics.

Re: J. Kenji López-Alt is Seattle’s reluctant powerful food influencer

#85

Post by MisterBastahrd »

tshaddox wrote: post #19
prpl wrote: post #15

Kenji is very good but also highly opinionated, often bordering on food snob. That’s fine, he’s often right but not always. I think that feeds into this problem: People following him will seek out “the best/perfect XYZ” which he looks for based on his own obsession at the time (smashed burgers, XLB, detroit pizza, etc…). If you watch old episodes of Jacque and Julia you will see how they could easily and happily disa…

That’s an interesting characterization, because I would have said precisely the opposite: I’ve seen that he consistently goes out of his way to denounce notions like “it’s not real X unless you make it with Y.” He’s pretty outspoken that it’s better to adapt recipes based on your own preferences, skills, and ingredient availability than to try to chase “authenticity.” It’s not uncommon to hear him say things like “it…

I usually do recipes "by the book" a few times, and then do it the way I want.

For example: chinese braised pork belly. Generally you cook the pork belly in the sauce until the sauce itself reduces and coalesceses around the pork belly, giving it a reddish appearance. Then you serve it over rice.

Problem for me?

I'm cajun/creole. While I'm perfectly fine with eating plain white rice by itself in the asian tradition, it's just not how we do it back home. We smother things so that the sauce mixes with the rice. So I added more of the liquid ingredients and brown sugar. I added some korean red pepper to up the pepper flavor of the sauce. I addded some cinnamon sticks because I felt it complimented the other ingredients.

Side by side, my pork tastes a little better than theirs. It's got more flavor. It also has sauce to pour over the rice.

It's not authentic (and not as red), but it's also something that everyone who has ever tried it has enjoyed.

Then again... if I see someone put tomatoes in a gumbo or jambalaya... or sprinkle seasoning on top of seafood after they've been pulled out of the boiling pot... that is a friendship breaker lol.

Re: J. Kenji López-Alt is Seattle’s reluctant powerful food influencer

#86

Post by covercash »

nyjah wrote: post #50

My favorite tip from Kenji is for the grilled cheese sandwich. I don't follow his recipe for 99% of it, but slicing a garlic clove and rubbing it on lightly toasted bread before making the grilled cheese completely enhances the sandwich without really adding an ingredient. Thats why its my favorite tip.

That’s also a good technique for bruschetta and avocado toast!

Re: J. Kenji López-Alt is Seattle’s reluctant powerful food influencer

#87

Post by BurningFrog »

deadite wrote: post #53
annexrichmond wrote: post #44

I lost a lot of respect for Kenji after this incident: López-Alt wrote that “it hasn’t happened yet, but if you come to my restaurant wearing a MAGA cap, you aren’t getting served, same as if you come in wearing a swastika, white hood, or any other symbol of intolerance and hate.” He added, “MAGA hats are like white hoods except stupider because you can see exactly who is wearing them.” Both tweets have since been de…

Your comment reads like what he did is in such bad taste that you have to let it be known, on a site that is pretty well established to be anti-MAGA, how you disapprove of this person's choice to also be anti-MAGA, and you're still trying to maintain your elitism and stature by saying "I lost respect" to continue to fit in on the site. You're playing edge lord on easy mode. Why even bother posting this?

Being anti-MAGA and calling the MAGA crowd genocidal racists are very different things.

Re: J. Kenji López-Alt is Seattle’s reluctant powerful food influencer

#89

Post by prpl »

tptacek wrote: post #67
prpl wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right, I stopped caring around that time (~3 years ago). That said, the science explanations are occasionally wrong. If you like science of cooking you might enjoy Cooking Issues/Dave Arnold quite a bit more. I generally prefer Dave's cut of the jib.

Dave Arnold is amazing and is probably a better HN food follow than Kenji (they're both great, but Arnold is distinctively HN-y, and also a truly idiosyncratic character.) But Dave Arnold's slogan is "you're an enemy of quality", a title you can obtain by doing almost anything differently than he might, including not precisely measuring the displacement of ice and water before mixing a G&T. He calls things "garbage p…

Dave is 95% theatrics (faux shock jockey?) and usually those are around technique (though sometimes a food is inseparable from technique) so maybe I am more forgiving in that scenario.

Cooking Issues is fundamentally a podcast about failures and attempts first and foremost, so it tends to skew a bit more towards scientific method I suppose.

Re: J. Kenji López-Alt is Seattle’s reluctant powerful food influencer

#90

Post by tptacek »

prpl wrote: post #89
tptacek wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dave Arnold is amazing and is probably a better HN food follow than Kenji (they're both great, but Arnold is distinctively HN-y, and also a truly idiosyncratic character.) But Dave Arnold's slogan is "you're an enemy of quality", a title you can obtain by doing almost anything differently than he might, including not precisely measuring the displacement of ice and water before mixing a G&T. He calls things "garbage p…

Dave is 95% theatrics (faux shock jockey?) and usually those are around technique (though sometimes a food is inseparable from technique) so maybe I am more forgiving in that scenario. Cooking Issues is fundamentally a podcast about failures and attempts first and foremost, so it tends to skew a bit more towards scientific method I suppose.

Respectfully, I think you're wrong about this. Watch this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2ZsYUPkXQ8

Skip to around 13:30, at the marker "Hose discussion becomes rant" (I assume Nastassia wrote that). He's not kidding. (He's often kidding about "enemy of quality", but sometimes he isn't, and it's a far blunter thing to say than anything Kenji has said.)

I love him so much.

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