chromedome

I know which was the oldest cheese I've ever eaten, but I don't know how old it was. It was in one of the deepest, darkest recesses of the refrigerator in my rental apartment in New Westminster, which demonstrably had not been cleaned since it was purchased (it was avocado green, which tells you all you need to know). I'd newly moved in, I'd finally finished cleaning the place (remember those IRA hunger strikers who smeared their walls with excrement? I know where they trained), I was hungry, and I was broke. What can I say? There was no visible mould, it was well saran-wrapped, I was still young enough to consider myself indestructible...I took a chance. It tasted okay, I didn't get sick, and I haven't noticed any lingering effects...<twitch> effects...<twitch>...

Step one: run a bathtub full of icy-cold water. Step two: drink it.

At my night job, we have two Kenwoods that are in the later stages of their second decade. We've just added a brand-new third machine. They are absolute workhorses, no question about it. The high/narrow bowl shape can be a bit of a pain for pouring things into, but it's better for whipping small quantities than the rounder KA style. My only gripe would be the sound level, which is indeed noteworthy. On the other hand, I really love turning it off...

The ortolans are my favourite part. The look on her face as the little bones crunch between her teeth is just priceless, largely I'm sure because that's how my face would look. I'm somewhat surprised that no-one's mentioned Fried Green Tomatoes yet. Besides the eponymous house special at the Whistlestop Cafe, we also have the honey-gathering and that, uh..."special" batch of ribs...

So let's recap, shall we? Consensus, as I read it, tells us: 1) all decaffeination processes will impact flavour. 2) all decaffeinated coffees are not created equal. 3) fresh-roasted is a big plus, if you're so equipped and motivated. So, what's the best approach? 1) Push the percentages a little bit. Since the decaf process demonstrably strips out some of the flavour from the beans, we logically wish to pick a decaf which begins with the best-flavoured beans our budget will permit. This may or may not allow us to select a process, but for most of us it probably won't. 2) Get the freshest-roasted beans we can. Some of us roast at home; for those who don't there are coffee vendors in many cities who roast their own daily-to-weekly. If we do not home-roast, certainly we could investigate the roasting schedules of our neighbourhood purveyors, no? 3) Learn to make good coffee, if we haven't already done so (most Gulletters will be up to speed on this, I'd expect). The best beans in the world won't do you any good in a $10 coffee maker from Wal-Mart. Tips, techniques, and hardware discussion are free and plentiful here. Did I miss anything?

Could this be what we in the former colonies refer to as "eggnog"?

For those of us in North America, another vehicle for assisting in relief efforts is the Mennonite Central Committee. They partner with local agencies throughout the region ongoingly, and have established an early response page here. MCC runs on a very lean budget and a very high percentage of volunteers (I've been an MCC volunteer in the past). For those of you who can spare the time, and who have applicable skills, MCC agency Mennonite Disaster Services usually co-ordinates teams of volunteers to go into affected areas to assist in cleanup and reconstruction. Note that although MCC is a Christian-run organization, they regularly partner with non-Christian groups and agencies, and consider strong relationships between faiths to be part of their mandate. They also operate North America's largest fair-trade retailer, Ten Thousand Villages.

A few suggestions: Place the bowl on top of your refrigerator; always a warm spot. Place the bowl under an electric blanket. Place the bowl on a heating pad set to "Low," cover. Set your oven to its lowest setting for no more than a minute or two, just long enough for it to start heating and get to above room temperature. Turn off the heat. Place a cup of boiling water in the oven, and your bowl of dough. In the case of some electric ovens, the oven light is a satisfactory substitute for a pilot. When your load of laundry comes out of the dryer, place your dough inside and close the door.

The first brioche I ever made was by hand. It was the recipe from my roommate's Joy of Cooking, and it also used the technique of making a sponge with the yeast as a first step. The biggest thing was achieving the satiny-textured dough, which I was advised to do by means of slamming the dough hard onto a greased table. I did that for 45 minutes straight, before getting to the stage where the dough was silky and elastic. Good thing I was young and strong and stubborn... The brioche turned out startlingly good, thanks I'm sure to the farm-fresh butter my roommate was getting from friends outside the city. However, it was such a pain to make that I've not done it since. These days, the one I make most often is the quick-and-dirty sweet brioche we use at work (natch). It makes damned good cinnamon rolls and holiday breads, but at home I seldom need 20kg of sweet brioche. I've made both Gisslen's and Friberg's brioches at school, and the Gisslen is definitely the superior article. Friberg's recipe only comes in at about 20% butter by weight, which is only nominally brioche as far as I'm concerned. I plan to try his recipe again, someday, but with maybe 50% butter. Paula's recipe looks good, too. I was toying with the notion of making brioche in my KitchenAid, at home, but now I think I'll use the Cuis instead (I've just inherited a 15-year-old DLC 10E from my night job).

Lucia: "Rounding" the dough comes in after you've kneaded it and shaped it into balls, or "boules" if you're French trained and/or pretentious. Cup the bottom of the ball of dough with both hands, using the same sort of "hand shape" you'd use to hold up a tiny kitten. Now, keeping your hands in a cup shape, slide your hands in opposite directions so that the heels (edges) of your hands are rubbing against each other, with the seam at the very bottom of the loaf in between your hands. Repeat until the top of the loaf has been gently stretched into a very smooth surface, and the seam at the bottom has been thoroughly sealed and is almost invisible. It's one of those things that's very difficult to explain in words, but immediately obvious when you see it done. Re-reading the above, I should clarify that the dough is on your work surface, you're not holding it "up" in your hands. You're just shaping your hands that way.

I read an article recently about a new wound dressing being used by US forces in Iraq, which uses a component of shrimp shells to stop bleeding. Turns the blood to "glue" on contact, or something of that sort. Perhaps this is a culinary application of the same substance?

A friend on another forum started a thread about "what are your favourite Christmas things?" My first thought was, "Hon, this is my twelfth retail Christmas...I don't really have any left." Thankfully I haven't had to work the Day itself since I was a teenaged security guard, but the month of December is a real kidney stone of a time for any retailer. Profitable, oh yeah (I was on commission most of those years), but hard on the nerves. You know this is when you're going to make as much as 20-25% of your year's income, so you never want to leave the floor. You go the can when you're on the verge of soiling yourself, not before. You come in early, so you can try to repair the previous days' ravages before opening time. You look at the clock at 9:45 PM and say to yourself, "Dammit, I was supposed to lock the doors 45 minutes ago..." (and the mall security guy is outside the door giving you meaningful looks). Then you eat your lunch on the bus on the way home, if you can stay awake long enough. Work until 5 or 5:30 on Christmas Eve, stay an extra two-three hours getting down the Christmas sales and displays, do the big family thing on Christmas Day, and then go in early on Boxing Day to get the new sale up. Open the doors, knowing that the first 10 people through the door will want a cash refund that's at least twice the amount of money you have in the store. For years, I'd be sick as a dog by New Year's at the latest because of the pressure-cooker atmosphere and extended hours at Christmastime. When I went to cooking school I told myself that, however gruelling a gig cooking is, at least I'd never do another retail Christmas. Where do I cook now? In a retail store. Oy. My primary role at my day job is running the bakery. Our workload almost doubled, my staff did not. My staffing did not increase at all, in fact. All of our extra product was baked AND WRAPPED AND DECORATED (pet peeve) by myself and my one daytime production person; who were also expected to cover tills and take customer orders while trying to get all this extra work done. Picture it. Thousands of extra cookies; shortbreads, gingerbread figures, cinnamon stars, sugar cookies, almond cookies; individually cut/decorated/dipped. Hundreds of kilos of sweet brioche turned into pecan-caramel braids, stollen, and filled loaves of different kinds. Some just baked off and sold to customers for their bread puddings. Oh yeah, and brioche puddings for the showcase, and marzipan to go into the stollen, and a few thousand 2" and 4" mince tarts, butter tarts, pecan-ganache tarts, and...well, you get the idea. Did I forget hundreds of portions of gingerbread for takeaway Christmas dinners? I'll be working New Year's Eve at both jobs, doing a full shift plus inventory at my day job and then going in to my night job (a fine dining restaurant) where New Year's is the busiest night of the year. Although we don't ordinarily turn tables, we do on New Year's; allowing us to serve about 130 diners. This may not sound like much, but bear in mind we are a small place (70-80 seats max) and we serve a five-course table d' hote. It takes 2 1/2 hours, on the average, to get through the meal. Fortunately my boss, the chef/owner, comes from a background in industrial engineering. Although we're absolutely hopping, the "flow" is excellent and the plates simply fly out of the kitchen. It's actually easier than a busy normal night for the back of the house, and the frazzled servers do very well indeed out of their tips. And they do treat us well; staff meal is excellent and last year the final plates were celebrated by the kitchen with Veuve Cliquot.

Well, in Newfoundland the squid is simply brined for 3-4 hours and then hung on the clothesline. During the season, an unwary tourist might be pardoned for concluding that Newfoundlanders are the world's champion handkerchief users! Once dried, the squid are tough and leathery (go figure). When heated gently on top of the woodstove (or in a modern oven) however, they become briefly soft and pliable. Then you just tear it into strips crosswise, and chew away. The initial impact is of salt from the brining, but the longer you chew the sweeter and more concentrated the squid flavour becomes. This is the only way I've done squid myself, but I should expect that it's eminently duplicable with a dehydrator. Clean and skin the squid, brine it briefly, and then cut it into strips and place it in the dehydrator. Vary the flavours by adding seasonings to the brine (peppercorns, etc) or by brushing or dusting the strips before drying with, repectively, a wet or dry seasoning mixture. Something in the line of a mild teriyaki would certainly work well, and I'm sure your imagination will furnish many other. Try blanching lemon, lime, or orange peel and dehydrating it in your new toy. Once it's absolutely dry, grind it to powder in your food processor or mortar and pestle. This makes a great ingredient for a dry rub, and lends an amazing character to numerous preparations.

The glucose or acidic ingredient (cream of tartar, tartaric acid - the same but stronger - or, at home, vinegar or lemon juice) helps prevent crystallization and keeps the sugar a little more supple. A good dodge for keeping your multiple pots of caramel at a working temperature, if your workspace favours it, is to use the door to one of your ovens. Just open a currently-unoccupied oven and put your spare pots on the door. Freshly-heated pots can go towards the edge, where they will cool only slowly; just-used pots can go back more towards the oven deck, where the sugar will reheat gently and without burning. This is what we did in the pastry lab at school, a long narrow room with workbenches in front of us and ovens behind us (at several stations, anyway). Ewald Notter uses an interesting gizmo to generate large quantities of spun sugar. Rather than using the time-honoured cutoff whisk with two dowels, he has a square piece of sheet metal with a handle on one side, and about three dozen nails on the other side (I'm pretty sure it was six-by-six anyway, might have been five-by-five). With one of these, you can generate insane quantities of spun sugar in a relatively short time. Apparently you can buy these gizmos, but my instructor (who takes a masterclass with Notter every summer) improvised his own. It's a pretty cool idea.

Rum will work just fine (says the East Coaster). Doesn't even have to be overproof, if through some strange mischance you should be out of it. So here's the skinny, as perfected in centuries of miserable Atlantic Canadian winters (the reason, after all, that Nova Scotians took to calling themselves "Blue-nosers"): Start with a healthy shot (1 1/2-2 oz) of your rum of choice. You may substitute other spirits at your discretion, though I can't think of drinking a nice single malt any way other than neat. The purpose of the spirits is to loosen your clogged head, so don't be stingy. Now add a healthy slice of lemon, which will give you a small shot of vitamin C to replace what the alcohol leaches from your system; and will leave you with a little bit left over as an added bonus. Next, add a reasonable quantity of honey (not sugar or anything else) as your sweetener. This is not a gastronomic choice; honey acts topically to sooth your throat and is a mild cough suppressant. Then add a nice fresh cinnamon stick, and (if you so desire) a small piece of fresh ginger and/or a whole clove. The essential oils of these spices all have proven antibacterial properties; and besides they taste good with rum and lemon. Finally, top up your mug with boiling water and begin sipping as soon as you can manage. The heat of the water, which will no longer be boiling once it hits the rum and the cold mug, will liberate the essential oils from the spices and also bring the alcohol to the very cusp of a vapour state. Drinking the beverage, at this point, allows those alcohol vapours and essential spice oils to penetrate your nasal passages and sinuses as they leave your body. One of these, consumed while very hot, will generally loosen one's head most satisfactorily. Two, combined with a hot bath, will generally break a low-grade fever. Three will ensure sleep that "knits up the ravel'd sleeve of care..."

Did anyone follow the link near the bottom of that thread, about the guys using liquid oxygen to start their barbecue? 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit in 3 seconds flat. Engineers. Oy.

My son was a bear for the broccoli. When he was a toddler, we had to make sure he was belted into his stroller before we went into the supermarket, otherwise he'd be lunging out of it when we got to the produce aisle. He also loved sauerkraut, and any kind of pickle. My daughter's thing, as a tot, was raw garlic. I was chopping some one day, and she was clutching at my leg demanding to try it, so I thought "Okay, I'll fix you..." and gave her some. She devoured it and demanded more. It was rather amusing, watching people haul our little blue-eyed poppet onto their lap and then getting the blast of "gasoline breath" as she nattered away happily at them. My nephew, as a wee one, was big on liver. Loved it...would scatter pieces all around the floor for later (oy). My mom tells me that I would devour any pickled onion that had the misfortune to cross my path, from infancy to about four years old.

What you have south of the border is different from what's up here, but one of my friends in Toledo insists that only Breakstone's gives her cheesecakes the right texture. Offered FWIW...

I made 20 dozen truffles last year for everybody for Christmas. Holy crap, it takes a long time! 'Course as usual I jumped in feet-first and dipped them all, and did not know then that a) Callebaut couverture is not the friendliest for dipping (kinda thick); and b) that a bit of vegetable oil added to the dipping chocolate makes life a lot simpler. I'll second Chambord as a truffle flavouring. It's very, very nice indeed. I also used Irish Cream, Grand Marnier, Remy Martin, and two or three others which elude my recollection at the moment. God, I was sick of the smell of chocolate for a while there. And then, after Christmas, I went straight into patisserie lab at school. Oy.

I generally use brown sugar in chocolate cakes, because of the additional moisture and depth of flavour. Also, I prefer a dense, moist cake as opposed to a high, fluffy cake. My favourite "quicker-than-mix" quick cake goes from a white cake to a butterscotch cake with that substitution.

The gluten might work... You might also try laminating the dough, like a croissant or danish dough. Roll in a quantity of butter, and give it a few turns. You'll get some additional "poof" from the roll-in, and it should also improve the texture.

This has been available in Canada (at least here in Edmonton, where I currently live) for over a year now. Several of my friends buy it regularly, finding it a pleasant summer beverage, sort of a "tequila lite." Most of them, being anything but purists, drink it with their usual soft drink of choice; a few use soda water. It's an interesting beverage. I'm not one for mixed drinks, so I can't answer for its versatility in cocktails, but there's nothing at all wrong with it as an offbeat "company" drink. Don't mind it myself, but wouldn't buy it very often (or at all, until I've paid off my student loans anyway. Gotta save my pennies for the good stuff...).

Potato soup. There's a thread around here, someplace...

I haven't seen it yet, but if it a) kneads the dough, instead of just spinning it around the bowl; and b) keeps the damned dough from climbing all the way up onto the machine; I'm all for it! Eagerly await any first-person feedback on the subject...

Gee...ya don't suppose a ghost who can use a computer could also fix a 20 qt. Hobart? ...Just wondering....