chromedome

We have them for miles along the roadside here, too. They do produce a bean-esque seed, but I don't know if they're edible. I've often wondered about that...Google it is. ...aaaannnnd, no they're not. Toxicity varies, but they're full of alkaloids and antinutrient enzymes and such. I've been meaning to look that up for a long time, but never thought of it when I was in front of a computer.

Thanks for the reminder! I've been busy with family matters this past two weeks, and hadn't thought to check whether it was "live." Here's the link.

...and a musical interlude, just because I thought of it at 2 AM:

We were all thinking it.

"The sausages are for the ones who know what their sins are, and want to atone for something specific." -Douglas Adams, So Long and Thanks for All the Fish

Onetime eGulleter Farid Zadi is doing North African/Mexican fusion in and around LA, and earning much attention and praise thereby.

Those are hard to get in my neck of the woods, alas.

So they go along with starfruit and dragon fruit in the "pretty but bland" category?

When my restaurant was open, stoneground Red Fife from our local organic mill (Speerville) accounted for about 60% of the flour in my house-baked bread. The end result was pretty tasty, if I do say so myself (I used smaller amounts of spelt, buckwheat and rye flour for a hint of sweetness and depth of flavor, and a smidge of gluten for structure).

Bottom line, you're trading volume for margin. You'll have to calculate the time you'll invest (and the impact on your retail sales) against the money you'll make from the wholesale order. When my parents had their bakery, they dabbled in wholesale for about five months before concluding it was just not worth their time. Admittedly there was one specific customer who was a tremendous PITA and that may have accelerated the decision a bit (my father, who was half the man's size, told him if he didn't leave he was going to be thrown out on his ear).

While you're awaiting a response from a more dedicated brownie baker (I don't care for 'em, and therefore don't make them often)...to my eye that's more egg and less fat than many recipes I've seen. Truthfully, even the photo accompanying the recipe makes them look somewhat dry. If all else fails, underbake them slightly.

I think the issue is cooking time. A potentially bacteria-laden steak spending 20 minutes on the grill has given pathogens little time to grow in the temperature "danger zone." The same steak spending an hour or longer in a sous-vide bath has a higher likelihood of pathogens reaching an infective dose. Longer-cooking cuts are riskier, of course, because if you haven't pasteurized the meat completely at the beginning of your cook time you are essentially creating a pathogen incubator.

"Wax apples" were new to me. Hurray for Google.

We've all been there. In the case of my worst mandoline cut, I was actually using the guard but a carrot stuck and my little finger ended up hitting the blade before the guard. That wasn't a happy night. Fortunately the building owner's niece, an experienced RN, was in the next room and bandaged me up quickly and neatly.

How you approach the mechanics of the cut is less about rules than common sense, and which knife you're using. For example with a sandwich on a crusty roll and deli meats, you might use a chef's knife to chop, point down, with the traditional rocking motion. If the knife is dull, though, you might do better to hold it at an angle and make a drawing stroke. Or you might find yourself cutting a squishy sandwich with a chef's knife rather than a serrated knife, just because that's what is available. Then you'd saw gently with minimal downward pressure, mimicking the way you'd use a serrated blade. In sum, I guess, it's analog rather than binary. There's a continuum rather than an either-or.

A friend of mine who raised Berkshires used to tell customers at the farmer's market, "Television is what people do if they don't have pigs to watch." His hogs played freely in their field and rooted to their heart's content. One would occasionally test the limits and get out, but because of the geography of his farm (on a peninsula, sticking out into the river) there wasn't really anywhere they could go cause mischief. They and the sheep eyeballed each other with mutual mistrust from their respective sides of the dividing fence, and amusing encounters between them often became fodder for next market day's customer chit-chat. I used a lot of his pork. He also sold home-rendered lard, which labeled as "happy fat." He was clear when talking to his customers that it was lard, but he at least got the chance to talk to them and explain its virtues as a culinary fat whereas if the label had said "lard," they'd just have kept walking.

There's a lot of variability depending on the sandwich, and personal preference. My best approximation to a rule of thumb is: Firm breads with firm fillings can be cut with a chef knife or similar, soft breads and squishy fillings require a serrated knife and a light hand.

They look somewhat apricot-ish. Would that be the closest comparison, or are they more plum-like?

Perhaps that's where Garrett picked it up. Apropos of the "ear food" thread, Dury is another favorite of mine.

Michelin-starred UK chef Graham Garrett, a drummer in various bands in back in the 80s, has just released a memoir of his transition from rock 'n' roll also-ran to culinary "rock star." Its title? Sex and Drugs and Sausage Rolls

I have a handful of heavy aluminum skillets left over from my restaurants, and they're in much the same state. Over time, as the non-stick surface eroded, they "seasoned" themselves with a nice, functional polymer coating without me doing anything much about it. Eggs don't skate quite as beautifully as they do on some of my other pans, but *will* cook without sticking and that's all I ask. These ones are a mix of brand names but appear to have come from the same factory; I picked them up from the Winners/Homesense chain of liquidation outlets over a 2-year period.

When I was an adolescent living in northern Newfoundland, crab was a nuisance to the local gillnetters. When a crab gets tangled in the net it struggles to get free, which means it gathers up quite a ball of mesh around itself. That means an attractively scalloped edge at the bottom of the net, where all that mesh has been lifted up, which in turn means hundreds of pounds of fish swimming un-caught through the gaps where that mesh should be. The usual "fix" was to have a crewman standing at the gunwales with an axe handle or a big stick, and one hand on the lever that starts and stops the net puller (the "Gertie"), usually a small Briggs & Stratton motor. When a crab came over the gunwale this crewman would stop the net puller, smash the crab with his stick, and fling the pieces back into the water. Then he'd restart the Gertie. In those days the fish you were bringing in typically fetched 12 to 14 cents/pound, so if you went to ol' Skipper Eli and offered him 10 cents/lb for all the crab he wanted to bring in, you'd find yourself the next day with a hundred pounds or more of very fresh snow crab sitting on your doorstep. We'd eat ourselves gaspingly full, then shuck the rest and bag it for the freezer. I still shake my head to think of it...10 cents/lb, even in those days, was a heck of a bargain. Here in New Brunswick the local Jonah crabs are a by-catch for the lobstermen, and one of my neighbours came to my restaurant once and asked if I'd like some to experiment with. I incautiously agreed to take "a few" for trial purposes, which resulted in a tote filled with 200 lbs. of crab the next day. They turned out to be the cussedest things...not especially sweet or powerful, and with the most heavily armoured shells I've encountered so far. Eventually I learned that their claws are considered the only really useful part of a Jonah crab, and they're often harvested as a sort of poor man's stone crab (or shady man's stone crab, if they're illicitly sold as such).

Usually the culprit is steam escaping from the food within the batter, and the inner layer of cooked-but-not-crisp batter in the case of thicker mixtures. I know of only a limited number of ways to deal with this: Batter only foods with low water content; fry them until they're completely crisp and dry throughout; or give them -- as @Yiannos says -- a rest in the warming oven where the dry heat aids the escape/evaporation of steam but keeps the exterior crisp until you're ready to eat. The first two options are thoroughly problematic, so I lean to the third. It too will only take you so far, but it's a good and practical technique.

I haven't done chocolate classes but I have done a ton of cooking classes, and I treat them differently depending whether it's a straight-up demo or a hands-on session. I usually worked backward from the time involved, then added in my costs. Once I knew what I needed to make an appropriate profit on the session, I usually submitted a proposal on a basis of "$(x) per head, $(my desired dollar amount) minimum, enrolment capped at (x) number of people." The number of people can be higher for a straight-up demo, as long as everybody can see. I charged more for hands-on sessions, on the basis that they're a PITA and I usually had at least one additional cook overseeing the participants. I'd venture to guess that the risk of your students burning or cutting themselves is probably lower than I faced. If you're doing a hands-on session, minimize the number of skills and techniques you'll try to do. In a straight demo format you can do lots of things, but when others are getting involved it slows you down tremendously. I don't know how much of this is transferable to your scenario, but it's offered up FWIW.

My current car was around that price. Slightly lower, actually.