ExtraMSG

I should do a blind taste test on my salt-averse wife to try and find the optimal amount of salt. I just need three Le Creusets. Time to shopping.

Yeah, you always want as little water as possible. The less water the faster the absorption, according to McGee. But I don't want to take any chances. 10 cups per pound of beans was about the least I saw in any recipes when I started doing it. I guess I could retest it. Those might have been uncovered in the oven.

2 hours is usually closer for me, btw. I would have put way more salt than that, though!

I didn't read through it, but the way I've always understood the terms (for Mexican-American purposes): Burrito: always a flour toritlla wrapped in such a way that the innards do not escape, that is, folded much like a spring roll, though often with one end open. They are also not cooked afterwards. Often has beans and rice inside. Can also be sauced and eaten with a knife and fork. Often quite large. Taco: usually a corn, but now often a flour tortilla folded over ingredients. Always eaten by hand. Not usually filled with rice or beans. Left open on the end. Ofen the tortilla (especially when corn) is fried first. Enchilada: usually corn, but now often flour tortillas wrapped around ingredients, often heavily cheesed, and covered with sauce and cooked. So, was the article actually referring to breakfast burritos??? I would guess that they tradition would come from places where the flour tortilla and the burrito originated rather than Texas. Since breakfast tacos are a common thing in Mexico, it seems obvious that people would eat similar things with flour tortillas if that's what they had to use. Though you Texans sure like to take credit for everything. I guess in that regard I'm agreeing with Jaymes, now that I look back through some posts.

How many people truly do scratch cooking, anyway? I think most of us are somewhere in the middle, unless you're making your own vinegars, mayos, puff pastry, cheeses, etc. Using a cakemix and pie filling seems barely worse than these.

I don't really use recipes for beans, but here are some things in my template: 1) Sautee aromatics, add spices and beans 2) 10 Cups of water to 1 lb of beans 3) No acids until the beans are the texture you want them 4) Lots of salt 5) Bring to simmer 6) Add covered to 250 degree oven until done I think that's about it. McGee explains the acid thing, if I remeber right. Apparently acids will prevent the beans from softening properly. If you want extra mushy beans you can even increase the alkaline properties of the water. I think that's what baking soda does in beans. I try not to screw with the pH. Beans are so bland, imo, they need lots of salt. I treat it almost like pasta where traditionally you want the water like the sea. I don't go that far because I'm often reserving any leftover liquid, but I think it makes a huge difference to have adequate salt in the water.

I actually think shows like this are fine. Not everyone has the time or ability to truly make food from scratch. Maybe it will encourage these people to make a bigger investment. I really doubt there are a lot of eGers using her shortcuts. But there may be a lot of people who make the step up from getting Pizza Hut on Saturday night or reheating Boston Market.

These are some pretty interesting surveys mostly from the '90s on the reasons for becoming vegetarian. The plurality of vegetarians claim health reasons. It'd be interesting to see if this has changed much over the decade. I imagine it has. The numbers of radical environmentalists and animal rights activists seem to have grown significantly over the last decade. http://www.tufts.edu/vet/cfa/Surveys/vegetari.html

WTF? I've never gone to a place in Mexico where tacos weren't served at stands in the morning. And who does't get a basket full of tortillas with their huevos con chorizo? I have to say that I hope this trend spreads because the breakfast taco is so much superior to the norm out here, the breakfast burrito, imo.

I like golden raisins.

That's the only way I cook beans. It's the primary reason I bought a Le Creuset, too. It's so much easier.

It never blackened before, but this is the first time I let it heat at 550 for 45 minutes. It happened before I made the pizza. I only use a tbsp or two of oil. It had been a while since I used the stone. I'm thinking of following the advice here and getting some slabs. I think it came out pretty decent for what I was trying to do, using an uncooked sauce and all. I think I do prefer richer sauces with more depth. I wish I had some parm, too. I'd also like to make the crust a little more crisp and crunchy. I'm not sure what does that.

In Portland Metro we have more than 21 and we're working on a permanent indoor version like SF's: http://www.oregonfarmersmarkets.org/direct...ortland%20Metro

You could always live an hour away in Sacramento for not too much more and get to see the Governator. Or join us in Portland for a lower cost of living. http://www.portlandfarmersmarket.org/ http://www.beavertonfarmersmarket.com/

Decided to do some testing. Here's the method that seemed to work pretty well (pictures follow): 1) Did the dough thing. Rolled it out thin and put it on a piece of parchment and poked a bunch of holes in it with a fork. 2) Put it on my weak-ass pizza stone (is it supposed to get so black? there was a disgusting amount of fumes coming out of the oven while it was heating) with the parchment. Oven was heated to 550 degrees for 45 minutes. 3) Cooked it for two minutes, then put on the toppings. Turned on the broiler and cooked it for about 3-5 more minutes. I really like the effect of the broiler. If I had more dough, I might have tried turning on the broiler as soon as the dough went in. I know the broiler turns off with too much heat, but it stayed on pretty consistently, maybe because the time was so short. The parchment made it much easier. No peel necessary. Even made removal easy by allowing me to just gingerly pull on the parchment and put the pizza into my hand. I would like a crispier crust. I used Hazan's dough recipe with a little cake flour subbed for AP and probably less flour overall. Any suggestions?

rancho, you just need to get your shipping department in order so that we can all make up for that guy.

I guess they had to choose something, but I think there are several Farmer's Markets that could be competitive with this one, including ours here in Portland or Pike's Place in Seattle. Maybe not quite the size, but in character... Not only 4 blocks, but several airplane hangars. The produce takes up nearly an entire hangar itself. Huge, huge building. Then there's meats and dairy! Here's a crappy picture from the inside, but you can see the roof and imagine the magnitude. Berkeley Bowl and Central Market certainly could make the list. I like Berkeley Bowl better than any Farmer's Market I've been to.

Lunchables. Most popular snack bought for kids would take about 3 minutes to make yourself at 1/10th the cost.

One problem I had with birks was that they hurt my feet with socks on.

But this isn't what's in most cans of chipotles, I don't think. Chipotles adovados or in adobo aren't the traditional ancho/guajillo or achiote marinades (adobo literally means marinade, if I remember right, in Spanish) that you would find in the full dishes. What's in cans of chipotles (at least the ones I get) is much closer to a bbq sauce. That's part of the problem, imo, with canned chipotles.

I don't like lengua much at all. Carnitas is actually my first love, though, of the typical choices you find in the US. Probably second would be carne asada or birria. Salvador's in Woodburn does theirs perfectly, even cooking it with orange. But all these change so much from place to place. Sometimes birria is birria de chivo and so more of a pot roast style dish. Or sometimes it's more like the northern Mexican cabrito and so roasted. Sometimes carne asada is more like fajitas, or sometimes it's little crusty bits. And if you like al pastor, I'm sure you've gotten way too many of the diced pork in bbq sauce variety of al pastor which would probably better be termed adovada. I almost never get al pastor because 75% of the time it's this latter thing unless you go to a place like Uruapan or Poncho's when they've got the spit turning.

It's a vinegarry sauce, a lot like a bbq sauce.

I've done several head to head tests now on Silpat and parchment with a variety of cookies and have found little difference. I do find that the Silpats tend to crisp the bottoms of cookies almost unnoticeably more. If you were baking something for a long time, it might make more of a difference. In my head to head tests, I was using aluminum half sheets for both and cooking batches at the same time using the same dough.

Chipotle is a smoked ripened jalapeno (there's actually an n with a tilda, but it's a bitch on a PC to make such things; when I write in Spanish, I wish I still used a Mac). But they also often come in cans swimming in a tangy adobo sauce, which people often don't like.

Plastic wrap on top makes a huge difference. If you squish it down so that it eliminates as much air touching the ice cream as possible, it will keep pretty darned well. I usually use some sort of tupperware style container, push the plastic wrap down leaving enough excess that it can cling up the sides of the container, and then close the container with the lid.