chromedome

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....

Things that go to dish and never come back? Check. Oven temperatures changed mid-bake because an entree got thrown in alongside? Check. Herb-and-garlic flavours infusing themselves from the roast into my cookies and muffins? Check. My tamis used as display dishes? Well...no. Mine are stainless, maybe that's why. My workload increasing 30-40% for Christmas, with my available time and staffing (already maxed) remaining the same? Oh, yeah. My manager recently took me aside to brief me on what needed to happen over the Christmas season. For one thing, I had all my extra seasonal items that needed to get done. For another, I needed to have a schedule of when my cashiers take breaks, so that the tills could be covered at all times. There are two of us (myself, and my day person) available to do all of the extra product. There are two of us (myself, and my day person) available to cover tills during my cashiers' 30-minute lunches and 15-minute breaks. Anyone see the problem with this? When I tried to discuss this with the manager, she looked at me blankly and said that she knew it would be a tough few weeks, but my predecessors had managed it just fine. Well, here's the thing...above and beyond doing what my predecessors had done, I also have responsibility for our pizza-pasta/carve station (where I'm training yet another new person) and have a few other hot-side details on my plate. This takes anywhere from 20-60% of my time, depending on how smoothly things are running on a given day. None of my predecessors had to do any of this. I've been a manager myself, in the past. I know that labour costs can make or break an organization. But - and it's a big but - in my prior retail lives, we were selling product that came into the store ready-to-sell. In my current incarnation, the majority of our product is turned out by the production staff of cooks and bakers. And I am adamant that maintaining staff at the absolute minimum that can conceivably get the job done is short sighted. On a "normal" day, when everything goes well and everybody shows up, we are able to get everything done...barely. When we get extra catering orders, or when somebody phones in sick, or when somebody quits without notice, or when a supplier shorts us on a vital piece of our order...which, essentially, is every day that ends in 'y'...we're in the weeds and scrambling. An extra one or two production staff, shared around the various stations, would let us get *so* much more done. Even simple things like cutting up our leftover baguettes for crostini seldom get done, just because we so seldom have anyone with the spare half-hour to make it happen. Feh. Sorry, Wendy, I guess I was overdue for a good "vent" as well. I do tend to chew people out occasionally, when I'm not seeing an honest effort to "get with the program." You know...doing the same things over and over again, despite my repeated and patient explanations of why it's a bad thing (I really, REALLY hate repeating myself); making more work for me or my staff, because of laziness; stuff we could all make a long list of. I tend to be a pretty upbeat, happy-go-lucky person, so the occasional snarling rage tends to get peoples' attention.

I got the Fibrox as part of my cooking-school knife kit. It works great, even on the super-crusty rustic loaves I bake at home. We have two of those long skinny Cutco jobbies at my night job, and they work great on the super-crusty artisanal loaves we buy from a local bakery. My mom uses some sort of skanky "super-knife" thingies that she picks up at the supermarket for under $10 (I think). They work really well, too, for a couple of years and then you junk 'em when they come loose from the handle. How much you wanna spend, bro? That's what it comes down to.

North of New England, in Atlantic Canada, a "mock cherry" pie was popular in the 19th century. It consisted of equal parts cranberries and raisins, cooked together with sugar and a bit of water. I've made it in recent years, and it's rather good.

At my school, we made a tart with sweet potatoes. They were shredded, raw, and mixed with some eggs and nuts and chocolate and one or two other things which elude my recollection at the moment. Then poured into a prepared unbaked tart shell, and popped into the oven until nicely caramelized. It was pretty tasty.

DameD, Calabria is where I had my first-ever espresso. It was a shock, I didn't really know what espresso was back then (lo these twenty years ago) but I was looking to impress a girl. She didn't drink hers, and was rather impressed that I did. Later I switched to Joe's, just 'cuz everybody hung out at Joe's and it was also pretty damned good.

I've been using the Pepperidge Farm puff pastry at work, but I don't like it very much. Not that it doesn't puff...it does, beautifully...but like all shortening-based puff in my experience, it tastes like nothing in particular and has a less-than-pleasant mouthfeel. I've just gotten the green light to switch my purchasing to the Mark-Crest brand, out of BC, which is all butter. I've baked with samples and it seems to puff just as well as the shortening-based puff (they make both a high-rise and a low-rise version, depending on which you need); but the taste of the all-butter product is markedly better. This is commercial use, mind you; I haven't seen either of these in stores. The supermarkets here only seem to carry the usual Tenderflake brand.

I'll second that recommendation, loudly and clearly. Unless, of course, you really *enjoy* hunkering down in front of your oven for extended periods, cursing and wondering when they'll invent one that doesn't come with random hot spots. Aside from the likelihood of being distracted or inattentive during the 5.71 seconds when the nuts are perfectly toasted but not yet burnt, the oven can work well. However, I find that the stovetop offeres a large advantage. When I'm toasting nuts in a skillet, I can smell when they're at the right stage. Just like toasting spices, there comes a point when the aroma suddenly blooms, and you say to yourself, "Damn, it smells good in here!"

I haven't thought about that place in years. I lived just a stone's throw from there on East Pender back when I met my wife. Poked my nose in there once, thought about it, and decided I was more in the mood for a bowl of soup at On Lok (or was it Penny's? dunno). Geez, that's almost 20 years now. Holy crap, time flies...

You might want to check out "Flatbreads and Flavours" by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid. Flatbreads work pretty much the same way that loaf breads do, but to my mind they're more forgiving. Makes a great way to learn the basic techniques, and gives you some easy variations to satisfy that improvisational side of your character. Once you've cut your teeth on flatbreads, so to speak, loaf breads are pretty straighforward.

Mmmmmm....quinces. They are seemingly hard to find here in Edmonton, unfortunately. I like having one on my kitchen table just to perfume the air.

Hot buttered rum is a favourite of mine, too, but I can't say the cream idea appeals to me...seems a bit much. Not that "a bit much" is necessarily bad, you understand, but I'm used to the other. I tend to play around with my ingredients. I've made hot buttered rum with jaggery (Indian sugar) which gave it an exceptional flavour. I've also used a thin slice of fresh ginger, occasionally. Other spices I've used in varying combinations would include coriander, cardamom, allspice, and toasted fenugreek (methi) seeds; this last because I thought their offbeat combination of bitterness and butterscotch would be rather interesting in a rum drink. I rather liked the result. My other favourite thing with hot rum is to go fruit-based. Either a slice of lemon and some orange zest, some simmered cranberries or a decoction of tamarind pulp; all of these go well with rum and honey and warm spices. Lately I've been gifted with a huge quantity of high-grade saffron, so I've been grinding that in my mortar and pestle and adding it to my hot drinks. The earthiness of the saffron and the aromatic fragrance of the rum complement each other beautifully, in my opinion. I'm from the Maritimes; once summer's over it's rum season!

I don't get it. How does residual stew on the head result in an exposed nipple? ....ummm....or did you have some other "wardrobe malfunction" in mind?

Hi, Annanstee! Baker's flour is what some companies here in Canada call their commercial all-purpose flour. We use it a lot at my work for cookies, cinnamon buns, etc...you know... unexacting items. If you bake cakes, go for the cake flour and save yourself some stress.

Consider it as a subtle in-joke for the cognoscenti, a nod to all those centuries of devoted trenchermen who've gone before us.

That's not immediately apparent, given the title of the thread...

I would argue for Iranian cuisine, which since the days of Darius and Xerxes has seduced foreign visitors/rivals/conquerors. While today's Persian cookery dates reliably only from the Sassanids, there are arguments to be made for continuity from the days before the Medes and Persians knocked off the Babylonians. Certainly few national cuisines can claim anything like a similarly broad influence.