What is the weakest area in your repertoire?

I dunno!?

Also, I am not great with ethnic food...except Italian.

If Italian food is ethnic for you, then what is mainstream? Pilgrim food?

My weak area is not an ingredient or a category of food, but rather a style, as I do not shine with flavors that are spicy/complex/blended (e.g. curries).

I do my best when there is one dominant flavor (usually the ingredient itself if I am in the Bay Area) with one or two supporting flavors for depth/balance/etc.

As such, even when I prepare "curry", which is quite often as lentils are a staple in my diet, I will only use a handful of spices.

As a side note, this seems to dovetail with my wine preferences, where I go for mono-cepage clarity over blended "complexity"..

Asian cuisine. I love it, find good restaurants hard to come by, never cook it, and don't have any of the 1000 or so ingredients on hand needed to make any given dish.

One day I shall remedy this.

rwj

I love to cook Asian and the way I remedied the number of ingredients was to pick up a couple every time I shopped. Eventually I had all kinds of stuff. And since most things are dried, they last a long time. Other things, like ginger, you can freeze.

Actually, you don't need everything to start with. Start with soy sauce, dried mushrooms and a few other things and you can cook quite tasty Asian food. Most of the ingredients you should have on hand anyway: onions, celery, carrots, etc.

[Jenise]

Asian cuisine. I love it, find good restaurants hard to come by, never cook it, and don't have any of the 1000 or so ingredients on hand needed to make any given dish.

One day I shall remedy this.

rwj

Robert, good to see you! You're right about Asian, your pantry has to be ready for it. Of course, jacking the number up to "1,000" is a way of ensuring it's too overwelming to get started.... (I recognize that ploy!)

Thanks, Jenise! It's great to be back on the boards. I think that I will follow Larry's advice. It makes sense and I do usually have most of the veggies on hand. I know that Deborah Madison has a good chapter on stocking the Asian pantry. I'll have to read that again and get serious this time.

rwj