jgm

Rum? Why, eggnogg , of course!

Tarragon, as in tarragon vinegar!

Welcome to eGullet, MiPatria! If you hang out here enough, you'll learn to cook! The important part, no matter which book you're cooking from, is ask questions. Like you, I am a home cook, and when I first joined I was a little intimidated by eG, since many people here are professionals in the food industry. It's important for you to know that I have never, ever been ridiculed or treated in the least bit negative manner, no matter how basic the question I asked. Learn to use the search function, to see what's already here; check out the eGullet Culinary Institute for some beautifully done basic courses, and just dive in and do it. Sally Schneider has a couple of cookbooks to check out at some point, "A New Way to Cook" and a new one, "The Improvisational Cook." Once you get comfortable with the basics, these two books will help you launch out on your own, and would be a nice complement to the books already recommended.

I've gotten obsessed with this bread, too... to the point where, when I found out my elderly parents will be in town tomorrow and want to have dinner with me, and I thought, "Dang! I can't start another batch of bread tonight!" Shame on me. Moving on, I made my second loaf yesterday. I put it together around 10 in the evening, just before going to bed, and left it until I got home from work yesterday, around 6. I pulled it out of the bowl and onto a floured cutting board, folded it a couple of times, and let it rest for 15 minutes as directed. Then I pulled the two sides into the middle, as shown in the video, and then the two ends into the middle and picked it up. More flour on the cutting board, and the bread went back down and was covered with a towel for 2 hours. When time came to bake, I held the cutting board over the sink while brushing away the excess flour, then plopped the dough into the hot LeCreuset, using a bench scraper to handle the little place that stuck. This was far, far easier than trying to manipulate a towel full of dough. This time, I measured the flour by scooping each cup, all at once, out of the container, and so used more flour than I did the other day when I carefully spooned it in. I also used SAF yeast from the blue box, instead of the Fleishman's that I used the first time. The results for this second loaf were far better than for the first loaf. The loaf was turned cut-side-down on the cutting board overnight, and was in excellent shape this morning. Crust was still crunchy, bread was still moist. The only change I'll make next time is to bake it a little longer after taking the lid off. 15 minutes was pretty good, but after first cut, the interior was a bit moist. But I waited only 15 minutes to cut it... I just couldn't stand it any longer! I think I'll also try some of the variations I'm seeing here, as I continue to fight an urge to quit my job and bake bread all the time.

Chili? OK. I love CHEDDAR CHEESE on my chili. Making it easy for the next person!

Being a notorious foodie can be dangerous. Some well-meaning friends gave us a boxed "set" (I have no idea what to call it) of cheese and salami from one of those shopping mall cheese stores. Another year it was a set of cheap mugs with powdered hot drink mixes. Thank God they moved. . .and now we can just enjoy the friendship without having to worry about exchanging presents. And I have a feeling the wife, probably at this moment, is on some other Internet board typing "One year some well-meaning friends of ours gave us a pepper grinder. Can you imagine? I had a full can of ground pepper in the cabinet at the time. But I got two bucks for it in the garage sale I had the next summer."

My LC is fairly new, also, and I had the same concern. I called the company and explained the process to someone on their customer help line, and she indicated that there was no danger to the pot. I've made one loaf with it this way, and noticed no problems. I think I will, however, cover the handle of the lid with foil. It may not be necessary, but if it prevents damage over the long haul, it's a small thing to do.

Although in practice, I would tend to heat it up again and eat it, other eGulleters have pointed out that it's not just the bacteria, but the toxins they create that are a problem. Reheating would kill bacteria, but not rid the food of whatever toxins they produced. Proceed at your own risk!

I'm very pleased with the results of my bread, but it was not without problems. The main problem is that it didn't rise very much the second time. Could the culprit be a too-cold kitchen? The yeast is pretty fresh; it doesn't expire for several more months. And also, I allowed it to rise for 20 hours, because of my schedule. Any input would be appreciated!

For those of you who are experienced at baking breads, could you suggest some possible variations to try? What would be the likely result of adding more flour? What would be the likely result of adding more water? What would be the likely result of substituting egg for part of the water, for the same total volume? How about other types of flours, as annecros has suggested? Would the amount of yeast need to be adjusted for added egg, or other flours? I find this whole thing quite intriguing, and I'm looking forward to experimenting with it.

I have four deeply beloved cats, but I would never think of sharing this treat with them. What a generous woman you are! It's the cook's treat at our house, too. And when I'm at relatives' houses, and the turkey is being deboned, I always try to distract the cook long enough to score the oysters for myself. I am incorrigible, unrepentant, and sneaky. And unapologetic.

Eagerly awaiting the next installment of your story, MelissaH! Two nights ago, I started this recipe. Our kitchen has been a bit cold, so I put some water in the crock pot, inverted the lid, topped with towels, and set the bread bowl on it. Upon checking the next morning, I was unhappy to learn that a lot of heat was coming out of the crock pot --way too much. So I turned off the pot and set the bowl aside on the counter. When I arrived home from work last night, I followed the rest of the directions, but the dough didn't rise a second time. Looks like the initial excess of heat did it in. I didn't bake it. I started another loaf last night. I just heated up some water in the crock pot and turned it off, allowing the residual heat to work on things. The dough looked considerably better this morning. I can't wait to get home and finish it. Sooo... the bread should be cool soon; do let us see the inside and tell us how it tastes!

Our local paper has a entertainment writer who reviews restaurants. She seems knowledgeable enough for this market, but I'd be surprised if she has aspirations as a restaurant reviewer in a bigger market. To get much out of her reviews, you have to read between the lines, because she will never blast a bad or mediocre restaurant. She doesn't hesitate to call a spade a spade when she's served a dish that lacks flavor or isn't served at the proper temperature, but she's careful to speak of that dish onlyand she finds positive things to bring up in the same piece. One of the problems with reviewing restaurants is that they're also advertisers. The Wichita Eagle had a disastrous incident a few years ago. A local story was pulled at the last minute, and the fill-in copy was about buying cars; it was a generic piece from the AP or maybe a syndicated writer, and not at all local, but it pissed off local car dealers enough that they pulled all of their advertising for several years. They got together and started their own publication, given away free to the public, in which all of the car dealers advertised, and really made the Eagle suffer for several years. The paper has managed to regain that advertising again, but they are very, very careful about what they print about anything. Unfortunately, the result has been some very leukwarm reporting. Literally and unfortunately, without our local serial killer, and some child abusers who need to be strung up, we'd have no excitement in the newspaper at all. It's a rare small-town paper that does credible restaurant reviews. It's difficult for them to attract the staff who can do it, and dangerous to run anything that's critical. Small towns tend to be very protective of commerce, so even if a restaurant's not producing very good food, if they're circulating money in a community, that's often considered "good enough."

Big Country, I saw you come into the dining room a couple of times during the evening, and I wish I'd had the guts to tell you that a fellow (albeit newbie) eGulleter was visiting. I hope to return soon, and when I do, I'll try to work up the nerve to say hello! I do have to admit to taking a verrrry long time to traverse the hallway outside your kitchen, so I could gawp at your wonderful toys and tools... Thank you, Big Country and Starker's Reserve, for a memorable celebration. ← Aw, come on... he's really a very nice guy! Nothing to be scared of. And I'm sure he's had all his shots. . .

I'm excited about this because of the long rising time. I work full-time, and have been looking for a way to bake my own bread without having to schedule my life around it. This looks like it may be an answer. I'm going to let it go 20 hours instead of 18, though, and I hope that works. Otherwise, I'll have to start it at midnight, to be able to work with it again at 6 the next evening when I get home. But I am very, very excited about this recipe and method.

I am getting sooooooooooo tired of the chefs sniffing and whining about "I don't know how to do this, I only know how to do high end food." Any contestant in TC2 who didn't watch TC1 is just stupid; anyone who watched TC1 knows that the show is not about only high end food. So if you're going to enter this competition, you need to practice cooking a little bit of everything if you want to win, right? I can understand how someone who works with high-end food all the time, would have no interest in cooking food of the ilk of TGI Friday's. But that's clearly not what this competition is about.

Sometimes the devil is in the details. I buy spices in bulk from a local health food shop. I can measure out the quantities I need into little plastic bags, attach a sticker with the price per pound, and I recently paid less than $8 to refill 17 herb/spice containers. They weren't filled to the top, but rather with a quantity I think I will use within 6 months. This same store sells dried beans and several other things in a similar manner. You can measure out what you want, and pay for only that. Less to store, less to spoil, less to pay for. Progresso canellini beans at a local gourmet gocery are $2.99 a can. Across the street at a chain grocery store, they're $1.09. It can really pay to shop around. I eat a lot of low-cost meals, such as spaghetti with Parmesan, macaroni and tomatoes, lentils, etc. It's healthier eating, and much less expensive. Many lunches are baked potatoes with whatever looks good. Even a baked potato and homemade soup is a great meal, and really cheap. Sometimes just a peanut butter sandwich and an apple is a treat. Deborah Madison's vegetarian cookbooks are a great resource for vegetarian meals. My main area of waste is in not using all I buy. I throw a lot of food out, and I HATE that; it's something I'm working on.

Bumping this up, for more information. . . I recently mail-ordered some of these, and they're quite interesting. Since they've been used as a substitute for pepper, I would assume they could be dispensed through a pepper grinder. Has anyone tried this before? I used them, cracked, when stewing a chicken last night. They were fine, but I couldn't tell any difference from regular black peppercorns. That's obviously not a usage that will bring out their nuances. I'd appreciate any advice or insights anyone can offer about using this interesting spice.

Katie, what an amazing report and an amazing trip you had! For those of you who haven't met her, Katie is about 90 pounds soaking wet; you'd never dream she could eat like that! I'm jealous!

Here in the States, a powdered buttermilk is available. I've used it in baking, and it works well. You might look around for it locally, or try to snag some if you or a friend are indulging in some international travel. You may also be able to mail order it.

Kansas has always had some of the most archaic liquor laws in the nation. Currently, 3.2% beer is available in grocery stores (but cannot be sold on Sundays) and everything else is purchased at a privately-owned liquor store. Whether to open on Sundays is optional on a county-by-county basis, and in the county in which I live, there are no Sunday sales. My husband and I are fortunate to have Air Force base privileges, and if we absolutely have to, we drive to the base on Sundays to choose from the extremely limited stock in the Shopette. And even with our laws that seek to severly limit liquor consumption, we have no shortage of drunken drivers. Combine that with a DA who doesn't believe in significant penalties until somebody is killed (almost always the innocent other driver or passenger; rarely the impaired driver him/herself), and you have a situation that lends itself to disaster on a fairly regular basis. I don't know what does prevent drunken driving, but it's not stringent liquor laws.

The"green" part didn't show. You looked at ease but enthusiastic, completely comfortable and confident in front of the camera. When I think back to Giada's first shows, she was quite stiff and reserved compared to how she comes across now. I don't anticipate seeing that kind of an evolution in your work; you seem to be already "there". I've never wanted to go to Vegas until now. Must have some of that chicken fried lobster! Man that looked good! There's a lot of appeal in a show like this being done by someone who works in a non-food field, and is not a chef or food professional. I hope you'll continue to play up the "cop" aspect of things; it works well and adds an interesting context for the food. I'm not knocking Rachael Ray's show, but this show comes across as a lot more street-smart and real than her show does. There's an instant bridge built with the audience in your show; when I watch Rachael's, having done some TV producing in my earlier life, I just assume it was the producers who did all of the scouting and made the decisions on locations and restaurants. HD comes across as your show, since people just naturally put cops together with little-known nooks and crannies in the cities. The whole thing works well, and the pilot didn't come off as an inexperienced effort. Congratulations on a genuine success!

While we're on the subject, is it truly too much to ask to be able to purchase such a wine in a box? I keep hearing rumors that box wines are improving. Since my husband doesn't drink wine, and I drink no more than one glass in an evening, I often hesitate to open a full bottle unless I know I'm going to be home the next couple of days to enjoy the rest of it. I'm aware that there are various things that can be done to preserve wine from day to day, and I'd also be interested in hearing about a simple, inexpensive system for doing that.

If all this expansion doesn't lead to a Starbucks within a reasonable distance from my office, I'm gonna throw a fairly large hissyfit. If good coffee was available locally, I'd be anti-Starbucks along with a lot of other people, but where I live, it happens to be just about the best available. There are some coffee shops in town that probably offer a pretty good cuppa, but buying coffee from them includes finding a parking space and walking to the shop, and I never have my act together in the morning, early enough to allow for that. Hello, Starbucks? Downtown Wichita, Kansas, ASAP. Drive-through window is not optional. Fresh madeleines also, please. Civilization is so hard to come by, sometimes.

One thing that we who are foodies almost always fail to understand, is that the Food Network isn't there to promote cooking. It's there to make money. Likewise, RR's show isn't there to please people like us; it's aimed at a specific demographic, and as long as it attracts advertisers and viewers, it's considered successful. I don't watch her show much, but I do from time to time. My feelings about here are fairly neutral. I do get tired of the giggle, the stuff like calling sandwiches "sammies", etc.; I've never been a fan of anything cutesy. But if she can get some of my friends to stop making scalloped potatoes out of a box, to stop buying Hamburger Helper, and to understand that the best soup doesn't come out of a can, and doesn't have to take much longer, well then, that would be great. And that seems to be what she aims to do. Some of her recipes are better than others, but for the most part, she uses fresh ingredients. I've made several of her recipes, and they've produced some good meals. Her show was never aimed at people like us. It's meant for a completely different type of audience, and its success will be measured by whether it actually accomplishes what it seeks to do. Sometimes I feel like I live a double life. On the computer, I have eG and the people on it, who eat well and cook well, or at least strive to. In the rest of my life, my friends are people whose mothers were lousy cooks, and who truly believe they are not talented enough to cook without boxes and cans, and so they never try. And there's RR, with a down-home persona designed to appeal to those friends of mine, showing them that it doesn't take that much to start with fresh ingredients and go from there. I am absolutely certain that none of my friends, even if they wanted to, could make it from where they are, to the eGullet style of cooking and eating, in one leap. But they all see RR as somebody who is a lot like they are, and sometimes I hear them talking about her recipes. And it's in terms of "I could probably do that. . ." and never "Yeah, like I could do something like that". Give her credit where credit is due, and stop worrying about what she's not.