mukki

Mukki, When I saw your post, my heart started to pound, and I rushed over to the Borders/Amazon site to search for the India book... alas, I saw the following message: "Availability: Currently unavailable. We don't know when or if this item will be back in stock." http://www.amazon.com/Culinaria-India/dp/3...86700268&sr=1-3 It still hasn't been published. I also checked the German Amazon site, and the German edition still isn't available. Where did you see the available listing? Could you post the URL? ← Check this link (if that doesn't work, go to bordersstores.com and search for "culinaria"). It states that the status is "in print" and available for order. I didn't actually go through the ordering process, though, so who knows -- info might not be correct. I did pick up the Germany and Greece editions at a local Borders (bargain priced).

There are ISBNs for India and Britannia/Eire, but the books themselves were never published. ← I just did a search for the Culinaria titles on Border's website and it indicates they have the India title available.

I use Weck's Jars.

We haven't seen the grownup cat pictures you promised!

If you want a puffy all-butter chocolate chip cookie recipe to work with, I can offer up my all-time favorite. It's from Southern Living circa 1993. I usually make 1/2 the recipe. Also, if you're looking for more coconut flavor, perhaps try adding some coconut extract? One more thought: Pichet Ong mentioned that he creams the coconut (unsweetend) into the butter as a first step, which is important in his recipe, though I can't remember what the actually effect was supposed be. 1 cup butter, softened 1/2 cup sugar 1/2 cup brown sugar 2 eggs 1 t. vanilla 2 1/2 cups flour 1 t. baking soda 1/2 t. salt 1/2 cup chocolate chips [or double, if you're not using the next ingredient] [1/2 cup peanut butter morsels = from the original] Cream butter. Add sugars, beat until fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla. Combine dry ingredients and add to creamed mixture. Add chips. Drop by tablespoon onto sheet. Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes.

After some quick internet research, it looks like cocoyam is, or is at least closely related to, taro. I'm assuming the two would be interchangeable? If so, it should be easy to find in most Asian markets.

I'm definitely trying these! Even though I spent a chunk of childhood in Maui, I've never had malasadas (or I don't remember them) -- horrible.

If you beat the eggs really well before you add the other ingredients, that will help. Your eggs should be beaten as if you used an immersion blender and the curd will come out nice and smooth. ← Or, beat the eggs with the sugar before adding the other ingredients. This makes for a more viscous mixture, which helps the egg whites get evenly dispersed. Thinking literally about it, of course, you actually want the egg whites to coagulate to some extent -- that's what forms the gel that makes a curd thicken and become a curd, as opposed to a sauce. You just want the egg to be evenly dispersed before it coagulates, and control the degree to which coagulation occurs. ← That's what I've been doing, actually, but I still got a lot of coagulated egg whites (not curd)--at least, it seemed a lot to me, since it was only the second time that I've made lemon curd. Which was why I asked. ← Have you tried the Fine Cooking lemon curd recipe? You beat the eggs and sugar with the butter, then cook. I haven't had any problem with coagulation when lemon curd is made this way.

I tried these a few weeks ago and thought they were pretty good. They weren't terribly well received by the other party in my house, but I finished the small batch I made in one day.

I checked it out from the library and decided to just copy a few recipes for now. Most didn't appeal to me enough that I thought I'd actually make them. And I have way too many cookbooks. I do plan on trying the Vietnamese Coffee Tapioca "Affogato" made with condensed milk ice cream, Vietnamese coffee, tapioca pearls and crushed walnut cookies!

Saveur is running a special offer of 3 years for the price of one here, which is a good deal if you usually pay full price.

I haven't made them, but Pichet Ong's new pastry book The Sweet Spot has a recipe for coconut chocolate chip cookies that he says is quite popular.

I have the molds and I have Thai tea, so I'd like to do Thai tea pops. I'm wondering if I can just freeze Thai tea or whether I need to make the mix stronger/sweeter since the freezing process dulls flavors sometimes. Pichet Ong has a recipe for Vietnamese coffee pops in his dessert book.

Roger's Gardens in Corona del Mar usually has several varieties of thyme at any given time.

thank you mukki, i actually did try this recipe a while ago and it produced (with my hands!) ok buns, but not the squishy, lightness I am looking for. ← Ah, well, good to know.

I've got about 2 lbs of fruit (golden raisins, blueberries, currants and dried plums) macerating in dark rum and 10 year old port (because that's was the oldest I could find at Trader Joe's). I'm going to invest small and see how it goes. I just had to try making black cake after hearing about the "pudding-like" quality. I also ordered one of those "free" miniature black cakes from rumcake.com, but I tried that last year and never received one.

I was thinking of making my own buns, too, since the ones I can buy all have weird ingredients in them. You might want to check out Moomie's "famous" hamburger bun recipe available at the King Arthur site.

I like your cookbook holder -- I never use mine because I hate jamming the book behind the long metal bar -- looks like yours doesn't have that problem. I bought one of the Presto Scandinavian coffee makers because of coffeegeek, too! It was either that or the Technivorm which seemed like overkill at the time. For the most part I stick to one cappuccino From my Elektra each morning, so the Presto doesn't get that much use.

Living in urban southern California, all I can say is that I'm very jealous of you foragers out there. I should be able to get wild fennel in the hills where I go hiking, but I haven't bothered to really check this out since I've heard it's very similar looking to hemlock. As close as I get to foraging is gathering boysenberries in my yard during the summer -- in fact, I was just out picking about the last of this year's crop. My only real foraging includes finding small, wild strawberries and wild onion growing in my grandmother's yard in PA. We also picked wild blackberries in the woods once near her home, but I don't remember the eating being particularly noteworthy at the time. My cousin insisted we buy those packaged "shortcake" rounds from the store and we ate them with that.

I have to say it used to drive me nuts when people (here in CA and in Boston, too) say "we're having a barbecue!". And then you'd show up and find hot dogs and hamburgers cooking on the grill. Sorry, imo that's a cookout or some such thing, not a BBQ.

Does anyone know how Silver Queen compares to Bantam and Country Gentleman? Sweeter? I'm trying Bantam in my yard this year to try to recapture the great corn taste I can't find anymore.

Your leek pie looks great! Would you mind sharing the proportions of flour, yogurt, etc. for the dough?

I use a stockpot, but I'm not processing huge amounts of jam. No rack -- just a kitchen towel placed in the bottom of the pot to keep the jars from bouncing around.

Your spicy soup looks really good as does the Cuban sandwich. Just had my first one at a new place called MILK here in LA ~ delicious! I thought I'd share my painless experience with trimming down a fat kitty. My cat Peanut was pretty chunky when we first got him and stayed so while he had dry food in his diet. We used to call him the 'kitty with titties'. I cut out all dry food, put him on a Wellness wet food diet and, within a few months, he was a lean, mean hunting machine (albeit with a deflated belly pouch!).

A few more -- Pure Desserts by Alice Medrich. Dolce Italiano: Desserts from the Babbo Kitchen by Gina DePalma