chromedome

IIRC, what they have at Superstore is the 835, about 54% cocoa. It's not a truly superlative chocolate, but it's certainly adequate to be the day-to-day chocolate for most purposes.

Like any other bacteria, salmonella requires a certain degree of moisture in order to reproduce. Royal icing hardens up dry as a bone, leaving any pathogens in a dormant state. It's the same as any other dried food, really. Think "cake jerky."

The ones I use are the round ones that you'd stick into a club sandwich, although without the cellophane ruffley things at the end. Compared to an ordinary flat toothpick they're maybe 40-50% longer. I bake round cakes in shallow 8" pans, maybe 3/4" deep, so these are more than long enough. Probably wouldn't work if I was using a sprinform.

Sage is one of the oldest culinary and medicinal herbs; and there are few with more varietals around the world. You can find sages with a variety of flavours grown for internal use; and sages in a variety of colours for decorative use. I love fresh sage but am ambivalent at best about dried, so I tend to freeze mine whenever possible. It does lose some flavour, but retains a "fresh sage" character as opposed to a "dried sage" character. Sage partners admirably with onions and their cousins. It is also wonderful with a wide range of cheeses. Chiffonade a leaf of fresh sage in to your next grilled cheese sandwich and you'll be amazed. Even better, combine it with caramelized onions in your next grilled cheese sandwich. Or for your next party, find a chunk of sage Derby, a gorgeously green English cheese similar to a sharp cheddar, but simply packed with the flavour and colour of fresh sage. For a variation on the digestive tea theme, infuse a bottle of vodka with fresh sage and have shots with your appetizers. "Rubbed" sage is exactly what the name suggests, more or less. Most of us, when adding fresh or dried herbs to a dish, bruise them gently with our fingers to release the flavours. Commercially "rubbed" herbs essentially do the same thing, albeit on an industrial scale. They retain somewhat more flavour than the ground, although less than home-dried. Ground dried herbs are vile and should never be purchased except in the direst extremity. I would rhapsodize at greater length and in more detail, but I've loaned my herbal to a friend.

Couple trays of cold cuts. Couple trays of buns. No cake. Bulk wine from the u-bottle place, and not much of that. Thirty-odd in the wedding party, including bride, groom, parents. I told my wife, "Hey, the first time 'round you got the wedding...this time you're getting the *marriage*. ...Of course, we were pretty broke at that time, too.

IIRC Madeleine Kamman recommended the refrigerator crisper drawer for those in hot, humid climates. ...though on second thought, that may have been just for SF-style starters. I don't remember for sure.

To cool your chiffon (or other sponge) cake which has been baked in a round pan, use six of the sturdy round toothpicks. Slide them down the edges of the cake, between the cake and the pan, and evenly spaced. Gently invert the pan. The cake holds the toothpicks in place, and the toothpicks hold the cake off of your surface. The centre of the cake will not get "rack lines," nor will it collapse. If you're cutting the cake later into layers this will not especially matter, but I've occasionally *wanted* the dome on top for specific reasons.

Marcia: To keep your copy of BBA from getting all splattered, I'd suggest covering it while you work. At cooking school, we commonly placed plastic wrap over the open pages and tucked it underneath to protect the cover. I eventually "laminated" the outer cover of my textbooks with clear stick-on plastic ("Mac-Tac" it used to be called), and joined two sheets of acetate (with more of the sticky plastic as a hinge) to replace the plastic wrap as a "raincoat." My textbooks survived all the messes of cooking school fairly intact.

I used to do that...but invariably the tie would come sliding back down at an inopportune moment and go splat! into my food.

I'm surprised that so many of you find Kamman overbearing and dogmatic. My reaction to reading The New Making of a Cook was that she was refreshingly *undogmatic*, saying several times (I paraphrase) that, "this is how I like it, but if you prefer a different way then by all means do it that way." I had a minor epiphany one night after reading that book. I was sitting up late watching the Flash tutorial on Gary Danko's website about how he did his seared foie gras dish. It occurred to me that, while Danko had been to the CIA, it was Kamman who really ignited his imagination ("The CIA made me a cook...studying with Madeleine made me a chef"). Kamman had apprenticed with a friend of her aunt's, just after WWII. This woman had learned her trade in a private kitchen, a chateau, around the turn of the century. The chef she'd learned from had been the last apprentice of the legendary Careme. Me=>Danko=>Kamman=>Aunt's friend=>last apprentice=>Careme. It may have been the lateness of the hour and the inherent lack of sleep, but I felt a degree of connectedness that defies articulation.

Those little sour leaves of wild sorrel grow just about everywhere, usually in poor soil. I'd be dubious about harvesting them for commercial use unless I was damned sure about the soil they grew in. Nothing like serving your customers fresh leaves from the 40-year-old toxic waste dump...

Just bought a bottle last week here in Edmonton, AB at the Sunterra Cellar. Retail there was, IIRC, $17-something. I tasted it at the store, initial impression was "hot" (high alcohol, go figure) and tannic, with some late fruit. Obviously, I was interested enough to try a bottle. Haven't opened it yet, but I plan to within the next day or two.

I work at Unheardof; two of my former classmates are at Jack's.

Dude, what are you on about? Who the heck's talking about fugu? That's a complete non-sequitur. By analogy, that's like replying to a criticism of your gas-guzzling Hummer by saying that it's more powerful than a unicycle. It's true...but entirely pointless. We're not choosing between "most likely safe" beef and fugu as ways to feed the world (heck, most of the world can't afford beef 364 days a year anyway). We're arguing that the choice should be between "most likely safe" beef, and "plain ol' traditional" beef, and that those choices should be clearly identified. A great many of today's problems were in fact yesterday's "safe" innovations. To be concerned about our collective track record...and the potentially catastrophic results of a miscalculation by our agribusiness industry...is not a specious or shallow reaction.

People have different physiological scenarios. We all have what are called "circadian rhythms;" different times of day when we are at high or low energy levels. This is why some people are morning people, while others are capable of little more than a grunt until noon. Personally I am nocturnal. During periods of extended vacation/illness/unemployment, when there are no external stimuli to keep my schedule regulated, I invariably gravitate to a noon-4AM cycle. That is to say, I wake up happy and well-rested at noon and I can run flat-out until about 4AM, then sleep until noon. My current job requires me to be up at 7AM, and I work from 8-5; but the only reason I do that is to have time with my family in the evenings. I am dopey as hell in the mornings, and while I function at a pretty good level, it's all based on adrenaline and routine. I start to be fully functional in the late afternoon, near the end of my shift, and hit my highest level of alertness and function round about midnight. That's when I have to go to sleep. I haven't been really well-rested for about 4, 5 years now. Traditional cooks' hours, aside from the family angle, are not an issue for me. Graveyard shift ditto, I'll do that until the cows come home. Starting at 5AM, on the other hand, would be a huge struggle. I guess that's why I trained as a cook rather than a baker.

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.