Recipe substitutions

el Ducko · Post by **el Ducko** » Wed Jan 11, 2012 05:06

When I want to try a new recipe, I'm usually out of at least one ingredient. Typically it's something like coriander seed (nearest Indian grocery store is 50 miles away) or Mexican oregano (obtainable at any grocery store, back home in Texas, but here in North Carolina it's impossible to find).

Alternative: in a pinch, you can substitute. Usually, you learn something in the process.

Today, for example, I learned that oregano is one of several forms of majoram, so I used it in my Greek Loukaniko lamb sausage.

Let's share some substitutions. Anybody know what's best to use when the recipe calls for retsina and you can't find any?

snagman · Post by **snagman** » Wed Jan 11, 2012 05:24

el Ducko wrote:recipe calls for retsina

Hey Elducko,

Methylated spirits mate ............

ssorllih · Post by **ssorllih** » Wed Jan 11, 2012 05:37

This is a rather detailed paper from Purdue University. http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/savo ... herbs.html

The wisegeek says that some very inferior grades of retsina taste rather like turpentine.

el Ducko · Post by **el Ducko** » Wed Jan 11, 2012 14:48

http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/savo ... herbs.html

...very good, very thorough paper, even better if you correctly spell maRjoram. It's interesting that oregano is never mentioned. (Maybe it's a reaction to too much hype about Italian food. I am told, decent Italian can't be found outside of New York and New Jersey. ...separate topic, anyone?)

Can anyone recommend a good reference or two on cooking substitutions in general? Unfortunately, retsina isn't an herb or spice. (Some have suggested that I look under "solvents"...)

We'll be making a visit to Raleigh soon, and I'll definitely hit a decent wine shop there. (Or maybe a paint store, ssorllih?) ...then continue to Penzey's. They have Aleppo paprika, a must-have for Spanish-style chorizo, plus about a bazillion other herbs and spices. If you can't find it in an Indian or oriental grocery, Penzey's is a must.

story28 · Post by **story28** » Wed Jan 11, 2012 15:50

el Ducko wrote: Can anyone recommend a good reference or two on cooking substitutions in general? Unfortunately, retsina isn't an herb or spice. (Some have suggested that I look under "solvents"...)

I am going to play devil's advocate here

. I don't think trying to replace ingredients is a good practice. What makes a clove a clove is it's individuality from other ingredients. Sure there are similarities, but nothing else shares the same chemical makeup of complex phenolic compounds, which are very distinctive. Sure, cloves share a few phenolic compounds with bananas, but that doesn't mean that bananas should be substituted for cloves. Sure, lobster and vanilla share the same compound vanillin, but that doesn't mean you can swap them out for each other when making cookies or a bisque.

Finding ingredients that share the same compounds is a great way to pair ingredients, but not necessarily replace them. In fact, these compounds, especially terpines and phenolic compounds are one of the BIGGEST reasons certain foods go well together.

I think this is a matter that would be intelligent to quantify. You can substitute one citrus for another in a recipe such as loukanika, but what makes it loukanika is the orange. And, that is sort of the essence of cooking: inspiration and evolution. BUT, to add something that is foreign into a classic, the product then turns into something else. However, that doesn't mean that that something else can't be tasty

el Ducko · Post by **el Ducko** » Thu Jan 12, 2012 04:31

story28 wrote: I am going to play devil's advocate here . I don't think trying to replace ingredients is a good practice. What makes a clove a clove is it's individuality from other ingredients. Sure there are similarities, but nothing else shares the same chemical makeup of complex phenolic compounds, which are very distinctive. Sure, cloves share a few phenolic compounds with bananas, but that doesn't mean that bananas should be substituted for cloves. Sure, lobster and vanilla share the same compound vanillin, but that doesn't mean you can swap them out for each other when making cookies or a bisque.

I agree in principle- - no lobster cookies for me. There are, however, some things that are okay to substitute. I must have blown out my delicate taste buds on a chili pepper years ago, so for the life of me, I can't taste saffron. I find it hard to work with, too, so I'm not bashful about slipping a pinch of turmeric in for color and saving a couple of bucks in the process. ...tastes the same to me. Similarly, the tiniest bit of kirschwasser (benzaldehyde, not phenolic but close) is all it takes to suggest maraschino, but any amount of rose water is lost on me. Juice of Seville orange is unique, but I can't get 'em where I live, so I mix orange and lime juices.

Sure, substitutions will never be the same as the real thing, but sometimes we have to make do. There are limits, of course- - TexMex any distance outside of Texas will never be done right, and as for barbecue, travel more than fifty miles in any direction and you might as well forget about it. But we try anyway- - making my own smoked brisket in the land of pork "barbecue," for example. ...and maybe that's why we make our own sausage- - an attempt to substitute for what we can't find, wherever we are at the moment. I'll probably never get back to Greece again, but hey! The food was wonderful, and I still remember it. ...even if I have to substitute to get it.

Now, baout that lobster cookie recipe...

ssorllih · Post by **ssorllih** » Thu Jan 12, 2012 05:48

Just don't attempt to make crab cakes and substitute canned tuna!

el Ducko · Post by **el Ducko** » Thu Jan 12, 2012 18:16

Gotta grin at that one. I promise not to. However, maybe there's someone out there of Japanese ancestry from eastern shore Maryland who would like to try? (Maybe tuna roll sushi qualifies as sausage. Yum.)

We'll soon find out if cheap chardonnay is a substitute for retsina. I just finished stuffing two different recipes of Loukaniko this morning. Hopefully we will attempt to choose between excellent and great.

ssorllih · Post by **ssorllih** » Thu Jan 12, 2012 18:46

Would a handful of fresh pine needles macerated in white wine get you the taste of retsina?

DLFL · Post by **DLFL** » Thu Jan 12, 2012 23:40

I found this description of their variation of this wine.

"Gaia Wines of Greese
Ritinitis
Gaia's is the hippest of the new, hip retsinas. The idea of putting an upscale face on the genre may seem, to Americans, akin to spending $500 for a paint job on a Yugo, but if this wine is to be faulted, it is for its subtlety [we've noticed that experienced wine drinkers are the ones who wax nostalgic about retsina anyway-its the new blood that gets its kicks from the put-downs]. Be that as it may, this is a wine with some fruit to it. It's actually a varietal from low yield Aigalia Roditis, stainless steel fermented with a quiet dose of resin from the Pinus Halepensis pine tree. It is a fun wine, citrusy and aromatic, with little resin flavor on the tongue. It is as elegant as retsina gets-certainly not one that begs for water or ice. It is a wine that makes a statement: retsina is a sore point for the new Greek wine industry. Dealing with it head-on is healing. This is a new twist on a tradition that predates Western sensibilities about wine. The tradition has its nobility, and this clean, sophististicated version pays homage to that tradition."

Dick

el Ducko · Post by **el Ducko** » Fri Jan 13, 2012 01:59

I love this snooty wine-speak stuff- - "quiet dose of resin..." "crusty and aromatic..." er... Oops. I meant citrusy, not crusty. My spell checker doesn't like the word citrusy. But seriously, folks, maybe sausage production needs to take a page from the wine advertising industry.

At any rate, these latest (ad)venture sausages ought to be "bold, yet understated" sausages, worthy of highest... eh... whatever. Seeing as how the price of lamb is so high, they'd better be good. Our New Zealander cousins are laughing all the way to the bank.

Maybe they'll say, "The [sausage] tradition has its nobility, and this clean, sophististicated version pays homage to that tradition." Translation- - "Damn! That was TEAspoons of cayenne, not TABLEspoons. Jeez, I hope I don't have to throw out ANOTHER batch of this..."

Well... you know.

ssorllih · Post by **ssorllih** » Fri Jan 13, 2012 02:14

tea, table, soup, dessert? A spoon is a spoon. From now on we just use grams and millilitres.

el Ducko · Post by **el Ducko** » Fri Jan 13, 2012 02:19

Attaway, man! Somehow a factor of three isn't quite as bad as a factor of a thousand, though, huh? (A kilo of cayenne goes a long way, gram versus kilogram, instead of teaspoon vs. tablespoon.)

You are right to standardize on metric. It's far more workable and less error prone. If only the SAE and friends hadn't lobbied to resist it back in the '60's, we'd be speaking metric like the entire world except Myanmar by now, and wouldn't have lost out to DIN standards. (If I sound like a frustrated engineer, it's because I are one. I can't count the lost markets, and the re-machining effort, that's gone on in the last 45 years. ...gotta be in the billions.)

I hoist a metric beer glass in your honor.

el Ducko · Post by **el Ducko** » Wed Jan 18, 2012 18:31

el Ducko wrote:We'll soon find out if cheap chardonnay is a substitute for retsina. I just finished stuffing two different recipes of Loukaniko this morning. Hopefully we will attempt to choose between excellent and great.

Well, the verdict is in, and the jury rules...

...in favor of the recipe with Greek red wine in it. (In the other recipe, in lieu of retsina, I used cheap chardonnay.) To be honest, the wine couldn't be tasted but might have been, had retsina been used.

The main factors were (1) better lamb taste, due to lamb/pork trimmings (better than lamb/pork/pork trimmings) and (2) better citrus taste, due to the use of anise + orange peel instead of a fennel seed + orange peel. Both treatments highlighted the orange zest, but the anise/ orange combination did better. (...but then again, I like Pernod as an aperitif, and you descendants of non-Frenchmen out there might not.)

This could become my favorite sausage.

Chuckwagon · Post by **Chuckwagon** » Fri Jan 20, 2012 10:08

El Duck-O wrote:

Can anyone recommend a good reference or two on cooking substitutions in general?

Sure! El CHUCK-O wrote:

Today, I opened up the mail,
And couldn`t believe my eyes.
My favorite kiel-bas-a recipe,
You`d think I`d won a prize!

I didn`t have a trace of pork,
So I ground some beef instead.
I also tried some other meat,
Found hangin` in my shed.

I searched the house for a little salt,
Found some for meltin` snow;
But the only pepper I could find,
Was ground five years ago.

I couldn`t find the mar-jor-am,
So I used some other spice,
It sort of looked like mustard seed,
I thought it would be nice.

There was no thyme or savory,
So I sub-sti-tu-ted mace;
I should have tried pap-ri-ka,
Or mus-tard in its place.

My buddy sent this recipe,
He said I couldn`t beat it;
He sure don`t know a thing or three,
I couldn`t even eat it!

Best Wishes,
Chuckwagon