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I really like them a lot. They should be juicy.

My neighbors' neighbors had a commercial grove of them in central California, near where I grew up. I wasn't impressed with them when I tried them, but I'm a bit of a traditionalist (give me good Satsuma Mandarins, please) and it may also have been an off year. Those I tried weren't very juicy, although the zipper skin was as gratifying as with any of their brethren. What is your take on them? (If you commented on their quality uptopic, I apologize for missing it.)

A favorite of mine, and easily scalable/customizable is a potato casserole with potatoes, sliced hard boiled eggs, some kind of sausage (hard or soft), and a random dairy binder. I grew up with this using cheap grocery kielbasa and cream of whatever soup (something innocuous and forgettable). I lived for a time in Budapest and there's a traditional Hungarian dish, called Rantott Krumpli (aka layered potatoes) that was identical in concept but generally used a specific spicy hard sausage and the binding was sour cream with a local red pepper paste. Best served with a highly vinegered cucumber salad with lots of garlic and dill. I wonder if a riff on this, with your local flavor profiles, would work? Chorizo would be perfect, maybe add corn? Cajun spices in a bechamel? Something like a crab boil in casserole form.

With chocolates, there is a thin layer of chocolate (called a foot or a chablon). Most experts say it should be untempered so as not to be so firm. Then the filling is spread on top of the chocolate. The chablon makes it easier to pick up each piece to be dipped and keeps it from sticking to the guitar so much. Some people add another layer of chocolate on top of the filling(s). As pastrygirl suggests, the biscuit layer may not be as crisp as it appears; it may be more like pie crust than a cookie. I would probably risk cutting something like that.

There's one way to find out! What is 'biscuit' to a French patissier? I know it can be a type of sponge cake but the video looks more like a pate sucree. The caramel may soak in & soften the base as it and the other layers set up. Liquid sable or a crumb crust might work - would definitely be guitar cut-able.

It seems the information I previously found on the giant tangerines mentioned upthread was incorrect. Rather than having been developed in Israel, it appears they were first bred in 1972 in Japan as a hybrid of Kiyomi and ponhan citruses. In Japanese, they are デコポン (dekopan). They are sometimes referred to as sumo mandarin or sumo citrus in English. An alternative name in Chinese, is 凸顶柑 (tū dǐng gān), literally 'protruding top tangerine'. They have been introduced into Australia and in limited numbers in the USA.

To my untrained eye, the biscuit looks very very thin and it is also well docked so perhaps it isn't as crispy (but not a soft sponge biscuit either). At the end of the layering and then cutting on the guitar (where they are taking them apart), it looks like there is a chocolate backing/coating under the biscuit. Im not sure it that means they first score the back with the guitar and then flip it to cut through? Would you do that (as a chocolatier)?

At that price, I decided to take one for the team. It was, shall we say, interesting -- although I picked up more funky herbal notes than the WE reviewer noted. It paired surprisingly well with a Niman Ranch apple-gouda sausage. Also, I felt buzzed after only about 5 ounces, which led me to accurately predict that it was 15% alcohol. I'll stay out of that issue for now.

Today was busy, with successfully-completed chores but not much down time. That won't sound unusual for working folks, but this mostly-retired woman found herself quite hungry, and with no desire for elaborate cooking, at the end of a packed day. Boy, I love my panini press. Dinner: A griddled salami and cheese sandwich with crisp outsides and crisp edges where the cheese had oozed and hit the griddle. Accompanied by a green salad and some woefully, horribly over-roasted vegetables from a couple of nights ago. Some of those vegetables are atop the green salad, where they provide more crunch than flavor. Well, maybe carbon / charcoal has nutritional value. 😉 But the rest of the salad is great, and the sandwich is unbeatable.

Ditto what @Smithy said! I love turnips and need to make this!!

Turnips and turnip greens! I'd never think of putting those into a pasta dish! Thanks for the report....and for the prompt for me to make compound butter. Assuming I can find some freezer space. 🙂

Watching the video, I can certainly see why you want to make something similar. You can see the difficulty of cutting the marshmallow--it has to be just the right texture for the wires to go through it (mostly) cleanly. The video's caption states that the layer is a biscuit. Just in case...somewhere on this forum @pastrygirl has posted a video showing how to replace a guitar wire. She helped me through my first (and so far only) guitar crisis.

I sent this to friends in Massachusetts who have six sheep.

Phoodle #1286 4/6 ⬜🟨🟨⬜⬜ 🟨🟨🟨⬜⬜ 🟨⬜🟩⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 https://phoodle.net obscure

Typical breakfast with canned baked beans.

It is this video. It sure looks like a baked biscuit at the start... https://www.instagram.com/reel/DGIU8oRuGaJ/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Pinot Noir. Strong, tasty.

Please report back on your experiments. It would be great to include a biscuit in a candy bar. Even better if it was easy to cut everything to the size you want. Understand the cost issue... my dream chocolate kitchen has a lot more equipment than my actual chocolate kitchen. 🙂

For some reason, I could not copy my result. I got it in 5.

From Six Seasons of Pasta: Garlic Butter p 27 Garlic Bread p 47 Pasta with turnips and turnip greens with anchovies and garlic butter p 200. The pasta was the main event, so I’ll start with that. I thought this was absolutely delicious! The salty, funky anchovies melded with the sweet, tender-crisp turnip slices perfectly. Everything was bathed in the garlic butter and brightened up with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice. So easy to toss together if the garlic butter is on hand. I will certainly make this again. Six Seasons sold me on compound butters so I was happy to add this little log of garlic butter to my freezer stash. I only made a half batch - one stick of butter. It’s got plenty of garlic, fresh parsley and oregano and a pinch of red chile flakes. I don’t make garlic bread often but once the garlic butter was made, I figured I’d try it out with a few slices and it was very good. Just a schmear of that garlic butter and a sprinkle of a Parm/Romano mix. Could become addictive. The oregano and chile are a nice touch.

Friends came over for dinner – these pictures are next day’s leftovers. We started with Mrs. C’s muhamara, served with pita chips. This was her best batch yet. Mole verde Oaxaqueno: First time making this, but it won’t be the last. Simmer cubed pork butt (and the bone) with white onion and garlic, adding a can of drained Navy beans towards the end. When the pork is tender, strain in a colander and reserve the broth. Meanwhile, roast tomatillos, garlic cloves, and Serrano chiles and blend to a smooth sauce with freshly-ground cumin, cloves, and black pepper. I rendered some of the trimmed pork fat into lard, and used that to fry the tomatillo sauce. Add pork broth and simmer, then add green beans and cubed chayote. Mix masa harina with pork broth and then whisk into the mole to thicken. Add the beans and meat, salt to taste, and simmer some more. The last step was making a puree from parsley, epazote, fennel leaves, and cilantro. This gets mixed in just before serving, adding a lovely green color and fresh aroma. The stew nearly filled a Dutch oven, but seven diners nearly finished it off. Served with arroz blanco: Jasmine rice fried with white onion, then steamed with extra pork broth and roasted Poblano chiles. Mrs. C also steamed broccoli and roasted sweet potato two ways: one with curry powder and brown sugar, the other (skins on) with butter and Old Bay. Served with more muhamara. Guests brought ginger snaps and amazingly rich and fudgy brownies with chocolate chips.

Phoodle #1286 4/6 ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ ⬜🟩⬜🟩⬜ ⬜🟩⬜🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 https://phoodle.net

I usually end up using multiples (either stacked or staggered out) whenever I use them, so the weight isn't that big of a concern to me. On rare occasions, I especially like having the 8's for things that will get crushed easily (like soft white bread or really delicate fish). But most of the time I'm using all three of the starter set to sear things. Smaller items like fillets get the full stack. Ribeyes are bigger, so I use a couple spread out (that's an occasion where I wish I had two 13's -- or something higher). Two of each would probably be ideal. That way you could have two nice stacks of 8/13 oz on large items like big steaks and the whole set would store in a small footprint. But honestly, any configuration is probably just fine.

In case it's helpful for some folks, just came across this on KA's website - a breakdown of names and whether sourdough or cultured/commercial yeasts are used, per type. https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/blog/2020/02/05/baking-with-preferments

Yep, agreed, it can be confusing. To me, a biga is a stiff starter using cultured yeast. A poolish, a liquid starter using cultured yeast. A pâte fermentée, also typically from dough using cultured yeast. Levain, sourdough. The wonderful thing is we can design things to do what we want, and how we want to do it. Rubaud was something of a monk. His "chef" was a stiff starter that he refreshed every 5 hours - day and night. I did that for a long time and finally just gave it up in the interest of a full-night's sleep. Instead of "levain" I should call it "chef," what Rubaud renewed. I mean starting over fully from scratch, a new mother as I mentioned. He felt his ongoing chef would drift per the quote above. Up until then I had maintained a starter from Chicago, something like 15 years old. It was liberating for me, to be honest, to let go of something like reverence for the starter. Here's Rubaud's process for a new chef. Note that these quantities are 1/4 of those he used - he felt there was a certain "mass effect" requiring the larger amounts for proper thermal mass, etc. He's probably right but there's no way I wanted to generate that much discard so I cut all to 1/4. Note he maintains a small amount of salt in his chef. This is to regulate activity.