Sir Didier Drogba;3821091 said:Yeah I use marjoram for a lot of things, I find it different from oregano, though I find the difference hard to describe - it seems to me to have more of an aniseed/fennel kind of taste which I find works better in creamier/dairy based sauces than oregano. Generally I think of oregano as more for Mediterranean/southern european cooking and marjoram for creamier northern european flavours, though I guess in reality they both originate from the same place. I have seen Polish people cook with marjoram more much for frequently, but that might just be for reasons of price/availability.
Sometimes I add the flour before the liquids, but I find that poses risks too, if you let the flour burn at this stage it can have a very negative impact on the flavour. Also, if I am experimenting, I sometimes dont know the degree to which I need to further thicken something until everything is in there and I can see the consistency. I have used your trick to avoiding lumps, though I tend just to mix the flour with water or soda water to form a paste, rather than with oil, but in this instance I prevented it by sprinkling the flour in very lightly and gradually whilst stirring.
I agree with what you said about sour cream sauces not needing much flour, I could easily have not added any but I wanted this to be very thick because it was as much a topping as a sauce. And I've also used a similar approach for making gravies for white meats, though when I am making gravy for red meats (even mushroom based gravy) I use a completely different method. For gravies I think I would always add the flour before the liquid because it really needs to finish up silky smooth, the 'after' approach is just for the most heavily reduced sauces or for stews.
The night before I made a whole bunch of Tex Mex stuff, and I used marjoram in my taco-beef too, thus defeating my 'nordic cooking' premise
All makes sense. Marjoram is slightly more aniseed-y than oregano, but if I'm really after that flavour in a sauce I'd use tarragon. It's quite aniseedy I think, and works really well on most sauces and gravies.
Marjoram in tex mex is just weird to me.
I'm guessing it's used in Poland quite a bit because of the price. It's cheap compared to most herbs, that's why it's often used as filler in mixed herb mixers.
