Alex

If it might help, this is the original recipe, by François Payard, published in the January 2008 Food & Wine.

Those Alt+ codes come in very handy. Here's a website with all sorts of tables. The third one, titled "The extended ASCII codes," is the one I use all the time -- for accented letters, some fractions, the degree sign, etc. Just append a zero to the beginning of the decimal (DEC) code in the table. There's probably a site out there with a more printable table, but I'll leave that up to you and others. The pi character comes from a collection of mathematical symbols. For example, the characters from Alt+234 through Alt+247 are αßΓπΣσµτΦΘΩδ∞φε∩≡±≥≤⌠⌡÷ There also are a ton of special characters in Windows' Character Map. I copied it to the Desktop for easy access; creating a shortcut there would work just as well. You can find it from Windows Explorer or My Computer at C:\Windows\System32\charmap I seem to remember that at some point in the foggy past, the eG powers that be recommended that certain words be spelled without any accented letters, even though they would technically be more correct if the diacritical marks were included -- for example, "creme brulee" instead of "crème brûlée" -- because our search engine wasn't sophisticated enough to combine a search both with and without the diacritical marks.

1) Pure corn oil wouldn't really add much to the overall corn flavor. 2) A couple of times I used fresh corn just cut off the cob, but I'm a purist, so I almost always stick with the basic recipe. 3) I use Paul Prudhomme's recipe from his Louisana Kitchen cookbook, which calls for 350°F -- and an 8x8 baking pan. (The linked recipe should specify a *small* egg.) I've never used a cast iron skillet. I also cut back on the amount of sugar in the recipe, which is fine by him. 4) See my earlier post. 5) No idea. 6) Prudhomme's recipe uses baking powder and salt; no baking soda. Hasn't sunk yet.

The ASCII superscript 2 is Alt+0178. (Hold down the Alt key, type 0178 from the number keypad -- not the top row -- then release Alt.) Similarly, pi is Alt+227. (On a Mac, pi is Option+p) There's also no need to figure out the actual areas. Because pi (sorry, π) is a constant, you can ignore it; all you need to do is compare the square of the radii. For example, a 8" pan = 16; a 12" pan = 36. So, in WalterG's original question, it's 32 vs. 36. Therefore, if you double the 8" recipe, you'd need to increase it by 1/8 to exactly match the amount for a 12". The cooking time probably would be different for the 12", though.

Interesting article from BBC News

This is great! Thanks, Jason. And just in time for Pesach, which I can see in your blog post was your intent.

Serious Eats from a year ago. They do have El Pollo Rico on top, but also mention three others: Chicken Rico, Ocopa, and Del Campo.

Wow -- I've never seen anything like that around here. Where are you located? What kind of store sells them?

shain, do you make those dehydrated banana chunks yourself? If not, could you post some info about the commercial product? (I'm assuming you don't mean those ubiquitous banana chips.)

Groupon is offering, for a "limited time," a "Standard Programs Certified Reconditioned" Vitamix, with a five-year warranty, for $299.99 (a.k.a. $300) US.

Not just a potential disaster for tilapia worldwide, but a cautionary tale about monoculture farming in general. Full story in The Atlantic

Yeah, but those free-range, pastured vegetables are expensive. I mean, they roam far and wide and don't take kindly to being herded. it takes several farmhands all day to wrangle enough for just one day's worth of noodle production.

Oops. I just read their latest coupon -- it's not valid for Breville. Foo.

You'll also now start getting those coupons regularly via email, if you stay on the list. Some are for the store, some are online only. I also occasionally get them (or one for $5 off a $15 purchase) in the USPS-delivered advertising flyers. The ones in the flyer, but not the emailed ones, usually are accepted past their expiration date. I hang on to them, just in case I want to buy more than one item at the store.

CI on food processors CI on the Robot Coupe CR top rated (by far) the 16-cup Breville (not the 12-cup reviewed by CI), $280 at BB&B after the 20% discount

A Few Questions About the Specials

Welcome, Orientalschool. "Food and drinks" is pretty much what this place is all about. Do you have more specific interests, like a particular type of cuisine? A particular cooking method? A particular category of drinks? Etc., etc.

Thanks, b_d. I searched their website for the recipe but didn't see it. Maybe it's time I got on their email list...

Tell us more, please, Steve. How long did you soak the beans (if at all)? Did you cook them separately from the rice? (I assume you did, but one never knows, do one?) How long was the cooking time for the beans. Did you cook both the rice and the beans in coconut milk, or just the rice? Did you use just coconut milk or did you dilute it with some water? Etc., etc. As a side note, I've used Massa Organics brown rice exclusively for the past seven years or so. Given a choice, I wouldn't use anything else now.

Deryn, you might want to check out this topic on LTH Forum. For some odd reason, the last post is from December, 2014, but you'll still get a good idea what the place is like.

Ms. Alex and I collect amusing typos from our students' papers and online discussion posts -- especially when it's clear the student relied solely on spell-check or auto-correct and didn't actually proofread carefully. We'll sometimes use them (anonymously, of course) to illustrate the risks inherent in such behavior. For example (to keep it food-related), students have written about eating "porn & beans" and "crap cakes." They've also "asked my pears for emotional support" and "conducted taste testes." Of course, such mistakes also occur outside of academia. I recently was doing a little online research about a wine -- a lovely 2007 Domaine Serene Yamhill Cuvée Pinot Noir -- that I was planning to take to a BYOB restaurant. K&L Wine Merchants (they often show up on a Google search) still had it on their website, complete with excerpts from the usual reviewers, along with their own description. In it, they wrote,

Interesting question, Doug. I decided to investigate, and what should I discover but the Latibah Collard Green Museum. It's about more than just collard greens, but they do have some relevant information:

One more: Chicago is known for, among other things, its Mexican restaurants, both traditional and progressive. Near 90 Miles and Bang Bang is the progressive, relatively new, dos Urban Cantina. Check out its topic on LTH, which includes a post by occasional eG contributor nsxtasy.

I'm probably missing something obvious, but could you explain that comment to me?

Unless you know something about their itinerary that I don't, they'll be nowhere near Detroit; assuming they'll be on 30 by then, they'll cross 75 near Lima, OH.