Malawry

What did it taste like?

I simply don't eat pizza. Low-carb pizza dough just sounds wrong to me. I'll be stunned if somebody reports other experiences. Sometimes I make English muffin pizzas for my girls for lunch, and I find that nibbling on the drips of cheese that fall on the pan satisfies any pizza cravings I may have. It's the browned cheese that I'm usually wanting most of all.

Definitely get a friend to get you into the World Bank cafeteria if you can. I ate there several years ago and enjoyed a respectable chickpea curry for something like $4 (including rice and bread). DO NOT eat at FBIHQ's cafeteria if you ever have the misfortune to be invited or hired and therefore given access. I worked on the same floor and they were closed for a couple of days due to evidence of rodents. (We had glue traps all over the offices to catch the little buggers.) Everybody at the FBI eats out unless they're desperate for time or just want a donut delivered by Dunkin Donuts every morning. (Those, and the coffee, are "safe.")

To be honest, I've not seen bunny innards. I just made an assumption based on the size of bunny bodies. I guess I was wrong. Thanks for correcting me!

My esteemed spouse loves them with sugar for breakfast. If I have them at breakfasttime, they're fried leftovers from last night...I don't make fresh grits in the morning even though this is a classic breakfast food.

That's funny. I usually use Damon Lee Fowler's technique and he swears the key to grits is to avoid seasoning them until the last few minutes of cooking. This flies in the face of common culinary wisdom (which clearly sides with Rhiannonstone), and I don't know if it makes a big difference, but my seasoning-come-lately grits usually taste pretty good. (Maybe that's just the butter, cream and chicken stock talking!)

Busboy, you're on. Then we should come post photos and testimonials here. To be fair, I suggest we use the same type of bird. It would be a great experiment. (Yeah, I realize this probably won't happen for a couple of months. But it sounds like fun!)

Hey, the steak looked good too! The problem with these sorts of things is you always have to try and top them the next year. I suggest next year you try to work multiple dessert courses into the menu for extra impact--and we can all use the skill development, right? I love doing pre-desserts and then offering at least chocolates and nuts after a long, intricate meal--it takes things over the top. Not that there's anything wrong with your peachy dessert, of course. I almost licked my screen, and I'm allergic to peaches!

My favorite Sunday breakfasts have often looked similar: Go to farm market, pick up baguette, eggs, and whatever veg looks good. Slice baguette. Poach eggs. Cook vegetable. Butter baguette, top with veg and egg. Add scrape of black pepper. Consume with coffee. Repeat. Adding pork products...any pork products...takes it over the top.

So what ended up happening? We're dyin' over here!

A big salad topped with buffalo-style chicken breast, bacon, and tons of vegetables. Root beer float while watching a DVD to follow. Ahhh, summer.

Sounds like a great job, Varm. I bet you were the toast of the office today! The boudin looks particularly appealing to me.

I think with any of the organs, you're talking about getting many many bunny parts before you have much of anything worth cooking. I bet cooked rabbit livers would make a great amuse-bouche in any number of incarnations...canapes, pureed and stuffed into mushrooms, made as a single ravioli served on a soup spoon for each diner.

My name is Malawry and I am a relatively new briner, but an enthusiastic one. I'm fairly new to cooking all sorts of meats and only started to play around with brining chicken in the last few months. I think it adds a great flavor to chicken parts or whole chickens for roasting. No sugar, though. I'm actually baffled at Busboy's experience with brining.

Foodgeek, I've never seen ramps at an area farmer's market...and I've looked! I think they grow too far away to be eligible for the producer-only markets, most of which have a mile radius beyond which a farmer is not regarded as "local." In other festivals... I hope you all will consider attending the Pennsylvania Lavender Festival in Fairfield, PA (about an hour from the Beltway at I-270) June 18-20. Cooking demonstrations, garden tours, cut-your-own lavender...and an herbal picnic lunch overseen by yours truly. (The new ham sandwich with orange-thyme jelly on focaccia should be particularly good.) Yes, it's a bit of a drive (especially for Virginians) but it's a good outing, and a family-friendly one for those whose weekend plans include kidlets.

I tried to get them at Vidalia once. (Since that escapade, they've been added to the menu at the newly revamped bar. Check them out and report back here.)

I rarely buy shallots for home cookery, unless there's some special occasion. I love the richer flavor of slow-cooked shallots but I also like the sweetness of onion. I like to use a combination of the two in reductions for beurre blanc, which is probably the classic sauce I prepare most often.

I was taught by one chef to just make some garlic oil as part of my mise-en-place, and then use that oil to cook the stir-fry. I don't usually use this technique but if you have a hard time with timing the aromatics and the other ingredients, it takes the guesswork out.

I cook pork tenderloin to medium doneness usually, and have never had it less done than that to my memory. It's still tender and juicy at medium. I'm quite curious now, especially since the same head of the same cooking school (which is my alma mater) never served my class rare pork tenderloin.

Hmmmm. Both my improvisational meat loaf, and my Joy of Cooking meat loaf, used ample bread crumbs. (I wonder if Sysco carries panko in anything less than a 25lb sack?) Maybe a free-form loaf is the way to go...since I can't slice the damn Pullman loaf anyway. I wondered if getting smaller loaf pans and baking many small loaves instead of one big one would help? (Not minis, but the standard 1lb bread pan.)

20% fat is about right for burgers, which is mostly what I use the beef for when I order it. (10% is considered lean, and it's hard to find ground beef with over 20% fat.)

OK, so I've made meatloaf for my girls twice now. I'm stuck with using the ground beef my supplier carries...I don't have time, energy or inclination to process down that much meat on my own. So we're talking a meat loaf made with a 5lb tube of 80/20 ground beef. The first time I made it, I kinda winged it on proportions. Came up with a tasty meatloaf. A little dry, and it crumbled real easily, but it was tasty. Today, I made it using the Joy of Cooking recipe scaled up for my quantities. Result: even tastier and quite juice, but it still crumbled into a pile of yummy meat when I tried to slice it. Both times, I baked the loaf in extra-large Pullman pans I have about the kitchen, until they hit 160 degrees using a probe thermometer. I let the loaf cool both times, for at least 30 minutes. The first loaf I couldn't even get out of the pan in one piece, but the second loaf came out almost entirely. What do I need to be doing differently here to get a meat loaf that comes out of the pan easily and slices cleanly? I would just bake it free-form, but the Pullman pans would make for easier portion control and more attractive slices.

Correction, Steve: The hearing is Thursday.

Hey, Mrs. P--I was there last night, too! My esteemed spouse is working on new flooring for our kitchen, so we went out rather than cooking as we normally do on weeknights. This time I had the ribs from the entrees menu, with slaw. The ribs are meaty and tender but not as juicy as I'd hoped they'd be, with a thick ketchupy sauce on them. It's a huge portion. The slaw is very simple, barely more than cabbage and salt. It'd be too minimalist as a foil for most things but against the richly flavored ribs I found it satisfying.

I think most families have their weddings catered for good reason. However, if you do decide to do it yourself, extensive planning and ample time are the keys to getting it done. Whenever I have a few minutes at work--the sort of time that doesn't seem quite long enough to really complete a project--I either wipe stuff down or measure/weigh out/compile ingredients for a future dish. It's a good policy, and if you plan your menus far in advance it's easy to make second nature. If you put out Tollhouse cookies at the wedding, they will be eaten rapidly. The Tollhouse cookies I baked for my cousin's bat mitzvah last fall were the first things to go...before the scratch brownies, and before the homemade rugalach with homemade jam!