chromedome

It was fine dining. Not international state-of-the-art kind of fine dining, but comparable or superior to anything else in the city (Edmonton, AB) at the time.

Sounds about par for the course. I was fortunate, I never did an unpaid internship (I was a career changer with a wife and two kids, so that wasn't really an option). The restaurant where I worked my way through school had a female chef as well, but she wasn't one to raise her voice. She'd just gaze at you -- well, me -- in unbelieving silence for a painfully slow moment or two, and then *lower* her voice. I've had a shouter or two along the way, but this was infinitely worse.

McGee played around with them at length, somewhere along the way (I don't recall which book or column). His end recommendation was to roast them low-and-slow (200°F for 8 to 10 hours). I don't usually have any issues with them, and in fact just got four or five pounds from my father's garden. I don't know how they'll work for my GF and her daughter, though, so I'll be cautious.

I would have done the same, in that context (I left them in the passionfruit sauce I made for my coconut-cream ice cream, for instance, when I had my restaurant). Those who don't mind the seeds can crunch 'em, those who want to can pick 'em out. They do definitely add to the visual appeal.

LOL Yeah, there's that. Not exactly fine chocolate work, but it *is* kinda cool to do the tour.

Well, St. Stephen is a pretty small place but it's the shopping hub for a large area. I guess that makes a difference. I do understand that there are plenty of remote, far-flung places in Ontario. I once spent 14 hours with my thumb out at the Pickle Lake turnoff, before getting a lift from just the third (!!) vehicle to pass me all day. I guess as a Maritimer I have the usual engrained belief that Ontario gets all the good stuff, and we get the leftovers. I can't fault Sobeys as a chain on cleanliness or selection. I do little of my shopping there, except for specials, but that's a function of cost. Superstore, No Frills and various local stores all have better pricing, and I'm a cheap bas frugal.

At the restaurant where I worked my way through culinary school, we catered a Jewish wedding once during my tenure. They specifically requested bacon-wrapped scallops, so yeah...definitely there's a distinction to be drawn. On the more comedic side, a customer once asked if it was possible to get our seafood medley without any shellfish in it. The seafood medley consisted of lobster tail, scallops and large prawns served in and around the emptied shell of the lobster tail, on a bed of citrus-and-saffron scented rice with a sauce based on stock made from the prawn shells. Soooooo....you want a plate with a bit of rice on it? Okay...

Heck, go for the gusto. A bunny in a Santa suit, with turkey tailfeathers and shamrock "bling" around his neck. Good for the whole year.

I find serranos pretty regularly at Sobey's. They seem to have a better selection of fresh peppers than Superstore, as a rule, though Superstore is now carrying more dried peppers (no more trips to Maine for anchos, hurray!). I live in a different part of the country, of course, but I have to guess if they're available in small-town New Brunswick (I've bought them in St. Stephen) you should be able to find them pretty much anywhere in Ontario as well.

A chef I know of used banana bread soaked in egg to make French toast, and served it with lemon curd. It was a pretty popular menu item for him.

Sounds like it was a very cool experiment. I wonder if a bit of oil blended into the sweet potato would help preserve a bit of the lamination effect.

That was in the first book, IIRC, when they lived in "the little house in the big woods." The cow's pasturage would probably have been pretty limited at that point.

I always wind up straining the seeds out of anything I make with passion fruit, now that I'm not "restauranting" any more. I'm not a fan of crunchy seeds (even with pomegranate I spit 'em out) and the unfortunate resemblance to frog eggs doesn't help.

It looks to me like bits of the polymerized fat from the seasoning could be detaching from the pan. I've had that a couple of times on pans I've picked up in various places. If that's the case, the solution is to take it down to bare metal and start over on the seasoning. That's not as bad when the pan is relatively new, and you haven't got serious time invested in the finish. Don't take my unsupported word for it, though. I love my cast iron, but I'm not a serious maven like some of the others around here.

Several years ago I dug a trench through waist-deep snow to the grill, so my late wife -- a Californian, mind you -- could scratch her itch for a grilled steak. I did the digging, she did the grilling (although I'm a culinary professional, only she could cook a steak exactly the way *she* liked it).

Doesn't answer the immediate question, but just FYI staph aureus produces heat-stable toxins that can't be cooked out after the fact.

Oh, indeed. A friend of mine down in the US served several years in the Vietnam-era Navy, then went on to be an investment banker for a decade+, then managed hotels for a decade+, and eventually passed the Michigan bar and became a lawyer when already in his fifties.

Not a horror story as such, more amusing. When I was entering my second year of culinary school everyone was trading war stories of their work placements, and one classmate topped us all. He was Jewish, and the hotel where he'd interned had him carving the ham at their Easter buffet. Sensitivity training, anyone? (Edited to clarify...he himself related it as a funny story, not a "horror story.")

I'm in the anti-tile camp as well, having spent far too many hours scrubbing the damned grout. I favor continuous, easily-cleaned surfaces in the kitchen. That being said, I understand the appeal of tile from viewpoints other than straight-up sanitation...and at the end of the day it's your kitchen, not mine.

It lacks a certain something. Maybe use it as the filling for a stuffed green pepper?

It's the 12-spline version. Honestly, I doubt I'll use it enough to need another beaker. I use my immersion blenders fairly regularly, but I've probably fired up a conventional blender no more than three times in the last decade. It's mostly for when my daughter and her hubby come to visit. They're smoothie drinkers.

I had the same thing happen recently when making my usual choux recipe for the first time in a couple of years (I'd been living alone...not much call for 5 dozen profiteroles at a time). I unthinkingly added 'em all, and it turned out to be "an egg too far." I made a second batch and combined the two, as @teonzo advises upthread, so I was only out my first tray of testers. I knew those were doomed as soon as I started piping, but I froze them once they were out and eventually used them for a dessert (split and filled with ice cream for snack-sized ice cream sandwiches).

I used to sell that at my farmer's market stall in the autumn, along with baked beans. Baked beans are just as traditional and deep-rooted here as they are in New England, but the steamed brown bread was something of a novelty and sold very well for me. I made it in two sizes; both smaller than the traditional coffee can, but more practical for my clientele.

I had a pretty good "wind anchor"...I secured the back corner of my canopy to the cannon you see at the left. These date from the War of 1812, which our neighbours across the bay in Maine referred to disparagingly as "Mr. Madison's War." They were reluctant participants in the war, and more or less continued trading with the enemy (us) for the duration. Local lore tells of neighbouring St. Stephen (NB) sending a barrel of gunpowder across the river to Calais during the war for the latter town's July 4th celebration; while Calais in turn allegedly loaned a cannon to St. Stephen on an emergency basis (a gun had been misappropriated, and an unexpected inspection threatened to get someone into deep trouble...).

I'd recently bought one of these used from Kijiji (similar to Craigslist) for my parents. The woman selling it knew she had the tamper, but couldn't for the life of her remember when she'd seen it last. Finally she asked her kids, who didn't understand at first what she was describing. Finally her 9 year-old son piped up and said "Oh, you mean my sword!" He promptly fetched it from the basement rec room, and presented it to me with a flourish.