redfox

By a funny coincidence, I just bought a bottle of that bergamot syrup. I'd love to hear more specific details of your cocktail uses of it. Edited to add: I was thinking of trying it drizzled over marscarpone or Greek yogurt, but the citrus + dairy acidity might not go well. Maybe pots de creme would be a nice vehicle, if I were less lazy.

Does anyone have recommendations for places that offer particularly good vegetarian sushi? I miss the many offerings in Berkeley and SF, where I lived before here, but I'm hoping I've just been looking in the wrong places.

Oh my god in heaven, does that look good. *swoons* I am seeing this as an element in some sort of heavenly sandwich or a ploughman's lunch kind of thing, with some exceedingly ripe cheese. I bet the slow cook setting on my rice cooker would do the job nicely. Time to buy a bag of feisty white onions, methinks.

Thanks for all the compliments! If only there were a hope of having any left for breakfast -- that would be a serious treat, indeed. Yes, I just tossed everything -- sliced cauliflower, sliced red onions, and rinsed chickpeas -- together in a bowl with olive oil, seasonings, and salt, then out onto the pan and into the oven. The seasonings that time were left over from a Madhur Jaffrey recipe for "curry blend" -- I know there's a lot of dislike for standard "curry powder," which is indeed often lame, not to mention old and faded in flavor, so I don't buy it, but then it was called for in a crispy tofu recipe I really wanted to try... and then of course I wasn't going to go to all that trouble and not make enough to have left over. But then of course it is incumbent upon me not to let it go all wan like the storebought stuff, so I've been looking for excuses to use it. I think the ingredients were tumeric, cumin, fenugreek, coriander, cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, and chile. I'm so very thankful for the chickpea suggestion; it's fantastic!

All thanks to you!

The preboiling method worked beautifully for me, exactly as promised. I'm thrilled! Poached egg over roasted cauliflower, red onions, and chickpeas, in the brief moment before being gloriously broken up and running over everything:

My question is about the Julia Child trick for preboiling older eggs before poaching proper. I'm very excited about trying it out, as I often think of poaching when my eggs have already been in the fridge for a few days or more. But I would think it could be quite difficult to remove those lightly boiled eggs successfully from their shells. Is there a trick to it? Or do they act just like ordinary raw eggs at this stage in the process? Thanks for the great and detailed lesson!

I've found that I get the best, thickest, creamiest texture in my hot chocolate (not cocoa) when I heat the milk to steaming, lower the heat as far as it will go, and stir in the chocolate until it's melted. Then I bring the heat up to medium-high until it begins to bubble around the edges -- remove from heat and stir. An immersion blender is nice for this. Then I heat it again to just beginning to boil, remove, stir. A third and final boil and stir would not go amiss, and then I add a little pinch of salt, vanilla, sugar if it needs it, and cinnamon and/or ground chile when in the mood. Something about the multiple boilings really enhances the texture, giving it that luscious, almost puddingish feel. Yum, now I really want some!

My Le! I like them a lot. Good pho, and their black pepper gluten (which I particularly mention because its name is so uninspiring, so you would be unlikely to try it) is really wonderful.

Yes! There's a quite good cookbook on this very subject -- The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook, by Beth Hensperger and Julie Kaufmann. I don't know about their recipes with meat, but I've found them to be good, straightfoward, and reliable in their techniques for things like pilafs, cereals, and bean dishes. They're good, too, on the topic of what works with which kind of cooker, and why. My National cooker has a slow-cook setting, which isn't discussed in the cookbook, but which is really great for all the kinds of things one normally makes in a slow cooker; it also has something called a Kamado option, which flummoxes me. What can it be for? If a kamado is a big ceramic barbecue thing, what on earth is its rice cooker analog? (edited to fix url tag)

I have now tried the brussels sprouts, and though I don't think I will ever manage to love that vegetable, this was far closer than I ever expected to come. Hooray! (Next time we come into some sprouts, I think I'll be sure to perk them up with lemon juice, too, which I think might get me even closer. Perhaps when that NVa Wegmans opens up, in honor of their being the source of the recipe.) But the cauliflower is still my true love. Next up will definitely be the cauliflower, red onion, and chickpeas all together, probably with cumin -- it sounds entirely delectable.

How I love my own Moka pot -- it's what I've used for my morning coffee for the past several years, and I'll never look back. I'm greatly endebted to Pongi for the trick of submerging the lower half in cold water to deal with the boiling-as-it-fills problem that crops up periodically, when my crummy blade grinder leads me to grind my coffee a bit too fine. I recently got a second 6-cup for those times when we have guests over (a 6 makes just the right amount for two of us, I find) and as I was breaking it in, I found that it was extra inclined to have that early boil trouble -- just another symptom of the crankiness of the unbroken-in pot? -- and was especially happy to have the trick on hand. The result was MUCH tastier coffee than I had a right to expect from a shiny new pot. I find, also, that it is good to start over a high flame, with the top up, until the coffee has come creaming out for a few seconds, being careful, of course, to position the pot so that the handle does not melt. Then after the coffee has poured forth for a little bit, turn the heat down a bit and close the lid, and turn off the heat while the last burbles are still burbling out. I also love my ancient bullet stovetop milk steamer, which builds up pressure wonderfully and reliably. It makes it entirely easy to get really gorgeous microfoam, and I will cry many buckets of tears if it ever dies. There are still a couple of companies making stovetop steamers out there (though it seems no one in Italy has any interest in them anymore, and I fear they will eventually disappear altogether) but they look much less sturdy and impressive than my dear old bullet. I should probably haunt eBay and stockpile like crazy.

I go through phases. For a while, my favorite was the red bliss variety fried in olive oil (the most important feature) made by Terra, I think. Right now, for some odd reason, I only want Wavy Lays (!). Presumably, that will pass. As a kid, my absolute favorite was the Mesquite Barbecue flavor of Krunchers -- that chip that came up a while ago in another thread. Truly, they were great, with a kettle-chip kind of texture that avoided being too rock hard, as some kettle chips can do, and what I remember as delectable flavoring. When we were in England this summer, I was hugely beguiled by the Walker's Sensations line -- the cracker varieties with a texture reminiscent of Asian shrimp chimps, as well as the potato crisps. I wish they would make them here.

Please tell more about these roasted chickpeas! Do you find they roast in the same amount of time as the sliced cauliflower? Were you using home-cooked chickpeas or rinsed canned chickpeas, or something else? Do they turn hard and crunchy all through like wasabi peas? Enquiring minds want to know. I am deeply in love with roasted cauliflower -- all the more so because it's so good for my diabetic husband's diet -- and intend to try the brussels sprouts soon. I keep on trying to like brussels sprouts and failing, but my love for the cauliflower spurs me onward. Here's hoping.