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Moopheus

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Posts posted by Moopheus

  1. if i order a vegetarian meal on the plane, do not tell me i'm not allowed to have a snickers bar afterwards b/c "it's not very vegetarian" of me (disapproving BA flight attendant)

    You have to be careful for places that serve those meat Snickers bars.

    "healthy" to describe food is legit. A secondary meaning of the word is "conducive to good health."

  2. I think that sounds like more work to use than just washing a Zeroll by hand. I've never had much of a problem with ice cream sticking to a Zeroll, so I don't see why you'd need a coated one. The other kind of disher with the release that sweeps through the bowl is useful for many tasks since it comes in a variety of sizes and can be scooped into almost anything, but for ice cream, it's hard to top the Zeroll.

    In the 30s the Zeroll was adopted by many ice cream parlors because you could make basically a hollow ball of ice cream with it, rather than a full, solid scoop. It was deliberately designed to be able to do that.

  3. Sure, but the origin of grappa is basically a form of moonshine, a peasant drink. Now you buy it as expensive, artisinal moonshine. But it doesn't matter, the cake was good and now mostly gone. In fact, I'll have to make another one, 'cause I don't know what else to do with the rest of the bottle.

  4. For x-day I decided to make the grappa, currant, and pine nut torte (sans currants). This recipe should come with a warning. I'd never actually tasted grappa before making this recipe. The wife complains when I make a recipe with an unfamiliar ingredient. But in this case it's okay. If I'd known beforehand, I might have decided not to make it. Grappa is pretty nasty stuff. It assaults you as soon as you open the bottle. I would never have thought to put this in a cake. I was just trusting that the recipe would work, and it did. The torte turned out pretty yummy, though you have to check IDs before serving.

  5. For the best grandma pizza this mouth has ever tasted, head to La Villa in Brooklyn.

    I had a pretty disapponting pizza from there shortly after they opened--I called in for take-out (perhaps a mistake), they said it would be ready in 15 minutes, and it was already waiting when I arrived in 10 minutes. When I got home it was cold, overstuffed with toppings, and very soggy. Not inspired to try again.

  6. Never had an experience but I once saw some guy hosing down a box of frozen shrimps on the sidewalk with hot water, and breaking it paprt with his foot on Grand Street and that was enough for me.

    My wife saw something similar in San Francisco's chinatown once--guy breaking up frozen meat by throwing it down on the cobblestones in the alley behind the shop. No reason to believe these are completely isolated incidents.

    I only shop for vegetables in Chinatown. I work on Grand St., and see the delivery trucks unloading the crates of produce every morning. At least I don't think they're throwing the bok choy on the sidewalk, but I guess I could be wrong. :unsure:

  7. Both Corleone family underboss Pete Clemenza and I (as I noticed last night while re-screening The Godfather) put a little sugar in our tomato sauce -- or red gravy, as some would have it. 

    A little sugar will cut the acidity of the tomatoes. It's not that uncommon a practice. But a lot of commercial sauces, especially the low-grade industrial stuff that comes in big cans, use way too much, so that the sauce is in fact noticeably sweet, which I think is just wrong. I have an insatiable sweet tooth--I like to say I am a committed dessertatarian--but even I don't want sugar in everything. If everything is sweet, dessert is less of a treat.

  8. Is mine considered an "older KA" which a few people have said are more reliable than the new ones?

    Hobart sold off the KA mixer factory in the mid-80s, though KA products continued to be made in the same factory, with mainly the same staff, until Whirlpool built a new factory in 1994. Most of the complaints seem to be about some of the newer models (like the 6-qt 'professional') made in the new factory, sometimes with cheaper plastic parts, that don't have the power or reliability of the older machines.

    My own has never given me a lick of trouble in 14 years, though I rarely make anything heavier than maybe a thick cookie dough in it.

  9. If you look on the package of most cream cheeses, you'll see they usually contain stabilizers and thickeners like carrageenan and guar gum. Some "natural" cream cheeses don't contain these additives. This would certainly make a difference in some recipes that have a high percentage of cream cheese.

    Have you ever made cheesecake with thickener-free cream cheese? Wondering if you knew how much difference it makes. I've always used Philly, but always up to trying something different if it works.

  10. Another real North End feel is Giacomos, also on Hanover street. They don't take reservations, so there's always a line out the door, and the prices are inexpensive, but the food is top notch. You pick your sauce, your pasta, and type of meat or seafood.

    As I recall (I haven't been there in some years, but it was always one of my favorites when I lived around there) Giacomo's (and some of the other North End places) was cash only. It is worth going to (I remember one cold, rainy, January night having dinner there, a long line of people waiting to get in, with empty restaurants next door!) but best to be prepared. If the pumpkin ravioli in cream sauce is on the menu, it is to die from.

  11. Any feedback on the "Sani-Tuff" board by Teknor, used extensively in Chinatown roast meat places, [as far as one could see]?

    I use one at home. I like it. It seems to be relatively easy on knives, but at the price that it does get cut up and needs to be sanded down once in a while. It's not particularly stain or odor resistant, but it hasn't been a problem (I didn't buy this board for its looks, that's for sure!). Sanding helps with that too. Other than that it's pretty low maintenance. Also, they might not be perfectly flat when you buy them (or at least mine wasn't). But sanding . . . Also, It's very heavy. I use it two-sided--a 'dinner' side and a 'dessert' side--so I don't chop chocolate on the side that's been used for garlic and onions. It costs about half of what the Boos board costs.

  12. So, Pan, you'd prefer that we all have to get coffee at the S***bucks at Astor Place?

    No, obviously at the other Charbucks 10 ft away at the B&N. Freedom of choice at its best.

    Though I can see how it would be annoying to have a truck spoiling the otherwise sweet, clean New York City air. Especially in August. :wacko:

  13. My thought is to use a basic vanilla gelato recipe as a base and improvise from there. However, I really do not want to waste these fruits that my one year old tree put so much effort into producing  :wacko:. So, some professional advise would be very much appreciated.

    Elie

    I've got an orange ice cream recipe that suggests infusing the zest into the cream, then reducing the juice (no need to add excess water) and mixing it into the base after the custard has cooked and cooled. Do not add acidic lemon juice to a cooking custard base, it'll curdle and be nasty.

  14. Pastry and cake flour, being both milled from the same soft wheat, do not vary greatly in their protein content. One is bleached, the other is unbleached.

    The chlorination actually changes the way the flour absorbs water and binds to fat, so that cakes made with cake flour rise more evenly. You do pay a small price in terms of taste for this, though. But I don't see this as a big problem; most of the time in cakes you don't want a floury taste. In bread, where the wheat itself is the primary flavor, it's a different story.

  15. In my mother's family (from East Boston) it's always called gravy (my grandfather was Sicilian). It sounds like this must have been common usage in Italian families all up and down the East Coast. Weirdly, I was just reminded of this by something else earlier this morning.

  16. I see all of the time, "with au jus"-why not just write it in English?

    Because "with with gravy" wouldn't sound very sophisticated, now would it?

    Over time, I think, these usages will change as some of these words become completely absorbed into English. Pizza is a good example of a word that has its own English language meaning and usage. People sometimes still say pizza pie but it already has kind of an old-fashioned ring to it.

  17. "Soba noodles".  Drives me nuts.  That's like saying udon noodles, macaroni noodles, or spaghetti noodles.

    I'll see your tautology, and raise you a "chai tea".

    Shrimp scampi.

    Maki rolls, anyone? This seems to be a fairly common type of occurrence (probably not unrelated to the reason people find it necessary to say "ATM machine"). There's probably a natural language reason for it, though I can't think what it is.

    In my daily work, we have to mix French culinary terms with English instructions constantly, and while we try to get tenses, plurals, genders, etc. correct, even with the help of native French speakers it doesn't always work. There will always be places where the language rules conflict and it will be awkward. But that doesn't, to my mind, necessarily excuse errors of laziness and ignorance.

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