chromedome

I'm unfamiliar with the powder, but I would be cautious in assuming it retains more flavour after baking than any other natural vanilla product. I've tried fresh bean vs. natural extract vs. artificial extract in baked goods, and found little/no benefit to using the natural product (this was the opposite of what I'd expected/hoped to establish, just for the record). My "take" was that the flavour compounds themselves are volatile, whether they are contained in the original bean or extracted in an alcohol solution. It might be interesting to pursue this as a group experiment, perhaps.

I'm confused...it gives them crunch, but ruins their crunch?

It's good just used as a syrup. I eat it occasionally on homemade bread, instead of molasses. Both are old-school tastes acquired from my parents.

I didn't believe it either when I first read it, several years ago, but tried the experiment myself and was surprised to find it accurate. That being said, there's some pretty nasty artificial vanilla out there.

Oh, you betcha. Many years back, as a culinary student, I posted a question about an obscure Middle Eastern ingredient. PW responded within hours (from an internet cafe in Istanbul, yet...), to my delight and amazement. I was already a fan of the writer, but her interactions here made me a fan of the person as well.

Those are all good suggestions. McGee is my own touchstone. I probably crack my Larousse a bit more than Smokeydoke does, but yeah...it's a great doorstop, and I've also used it overnight to apply weight to furniture I've recently glued (my "compact" OED works pretty well for that, as well). If you want to have classic French cuisine at your fingertips but in a more pocket-friendly format, the "Repertoire de la Cuisine" is a good choice. It gives you a terse description ("like x, but with quenelles of fish") and it's then up to you to either know it or Google it from there. I'd maybe suggest Pepin for technique, if you want basic knife skills etc in dead-tree form rather than a YouTube video.

(Sigh) Another 2 or 3 weeks before I even start any seeds. More snow last night, and another snowfall for tomorrow night. There's a reason the Victoria Day weekend (right around Memorial Day, for Americans) is our traditional planting time.

I'm in the non-brownie camp myself. Though I've found that a small bit of leftover batter, stirred into walnut halves (just enough to hold the walnuts together, basically) works pretty nicely when baked.

LOL In an earlier edition of Bo Friberg's "Professional Pastry Chef," he apparently suggested raisins as a perfectly compatible addition to American-style brownies, which were a novelty to him. In the fourth edition, he ruefully observed that he "hadn't been in that much trouble since he'd used someone's fabric scissors to cut paper." I'd recently experienced the latter trauma myself, and found the quote correspondingly amusing.

It's ambiguous, but fwiw I'd lean in the "egg" direction. The bunny appears to be holding/presenting whatever it is...to my mind if it was rubbing its belly, the arms should come out a little further. Mind you, I *have* been known to overthink things occasionally.

I was hung up on the brand name, and didn't even see the slogan. "Open a can, and BOOM! Chakalaka..."

Muffin-pan tartlets are the default for home bakers. Individual shells in foil tartlet pans is the commonest "take" commercially, from what I've seen.

I saw that this morning. Personally I'm in the pro-raisin camp, but have had to reconcile myself to barren, raisin-deprived butter tarts for the sake of peace in the family.

The meal-in-a-box thing strikes me as the culinary equivalent of smartwatches...there's a market there, to be sure, but it's not as big as its boosters think it is. Not in this format, at any rate.

Agreed, those came out spectacularly well for a first attempt. The lamination is beautiful, you were clearly meticulous in your layering. Re: first batch vs. second batch...were they in the same bag, or did you separate them by batch and freeze them that way? I've noticed in the past that when I have a quantity in one large bag, and take from them as needed, the later ones aren't usually as good. I don't know whether that's because of air/moisture (I'm in a coastal climate) getting into the bag, or just because they're older. If they're bagged separately, I suppose one bag might potentially have been sealed better than the other. Unless your yeast was brand new, that might have been the issue as well. Less-vigorous yeast might fade more quickly in the freezer, performing well enough initially but then dying away. Lots of variables at play is the bottom line. You'll probably need to repeat the experiment a few times to know for sure. As for the size of the triangles, did you cut a nock into the middle of the flat end before you began rolling? Most recipes mention this, and it helps them stretch. As you roll up the croissant you gently stretch it by easing your hands apart, as if rolling a breadstick (though not quite as vigorously). Once you get the knack of it, you can make the finished croissant quite significantly wider and thinner, giving it a prettier shape once proofed and baked.

Authentic recipes use bones, I understand.

I dunno...half price on racks of lamb is reason enough to backslide, IMO.

It could always be worse. My ex-wife once mistook her contact lens protein-remover solution for her decongestant nasal spray, and snorted a significant quantity into her sinuses. Apparently, this is not a good place for protein-digesting enzymes. She was very emphatic about that, afterwards.

Yeah, prices are pretty variable. I took a photo of the LCD advertising on a gas pump a couple of years ago to make my US colleagues jealous: One of the three door-crasher prices they advertised was live lobsters at $5.99/lb. One colleague commented that she didn't know which was more shocking...the crazy-low price of the lobsters, or the crazy-high price of the milk and bread. I didn't have the heart to tell her that those were lower-than-supermarket prices.

I consider that to be an oxymoron. There are really only two quantities of butter...not enough, and as much as a given piece of food will hold.

I do that, too. Also if the recipe calls for sugar, I put at least half of it into the egg whites to make the foam more durable.

I pulled a few packages of cut-up rabbit from my mom's freezer for stew, and found that one of them had the livers and hearts in with it. So I went ahead with the stew, but ate the livers and hearts on toast for my lunch. I just sauteed them and topped them with caramelized onions, though. I was hungry.

Double scallops? Oh, the humanity.... Good of you to be so sporting about taking one for the team.

I cook them on one side only, like a crepe. When the side you're looking at reaches the doneness you want in the middle of a normal chop, flip them onto a plate. If you're serving someone who'd be aghast at not "cooking" the second side, flip it in the pan and let it sizzle for a nominal few seconds before sliding it out.

It turns out that getting a shout-out from Justin Trudeau at the United Nations is pretty good for business. Who knew? http://www.saveur.com/peace-by-chocolate-syrian-refugee-chocolate-company-canada