chromedome

Having married into a Mennonite family, I'm all in favour of that! Come to think of it, I've got a couple of Mennonite cookbooks on my shelf. I should look at those.

My next-door neighbour was asking a few days ago whether I had a good recipe for homemade doughnuts. Appears his mother used to make them, and he's had a hankering lately. Well, now I've got the itch. Unfortunately, while I've tried a few recipes over the years, I've not been happy with any of them. Do any of you have a good recipe for either a cake doughnut or a yeast doughnut? I've just been given one of those Moulinex deep-fryers, so the timing seems to be coming together just right...

I just cooked urad dhal last week for the first time ever. I'll second that observation (and so will my wife...).

This is really the heart of your problem, and it's good that you are able to step back and see it. I was a *damn* good culinary student, and as a career-changer I had a full 25 years behind me as a good and adventurous home cook/baker. Even so, I was entirely out of my depth during my first few months in a real workplace. I needed to be shown things...it was that simple. I needed to know what the real-world expectations were. Take things slowly. Be explicit. Work on one thing at a time. Put them in writing, for when you're not there (or are too busy). Ensure that your employee knows exactly what you expect. Then, if she fails to deliver, she'll know exactly where and how she has let you down. You may want to turn to your local library for a copy of a book by Zig Ziglar called "Top Performance." It includes a section on this very issue of managing results, which I found very useful as a retail manager. You needn't adopt his methodology wholesale, but it would provide a good framework to build your own system upon.

This is the one that most of us would be familiar with, and use. I'm not immediately familiar with the one you've shown, but I've had a similar bar in a blue/silver wrapper. Those were a good-quality candy bar, I'd guess them to be at around the 50% mark (SWAG* only, not to be counted on). Best suggestion I can make is to try it out and see what you think. If nothing else, it'll be great for dipping strawberries in! *SWAG, if you are unfamiliar with the term, is "Scientific Wild-Ass Guess"

Interesting stuff. I'd always considered canola oil to be neutral in flavour until my third semester in cooking school, where as part of one class we taste-tested spoonsful of 10 different oils and vinegars. To my surprise, the canola oil had a profoundly musty flavour, rather like window putty. Some growers here are putting out a fancy-schmancy cold-pressed organic canola oil, which we also tried. It has a beautiful green-gold colour, and more body to it than the regular kind, and...tastes even mustier and more like window putty. <sigh> The baking soda vs. baking powder thing interests me too. I taste the baking soda very clearly in any recipe it's used in, so I generally just avoid them. I know that people have different sensitivities (as regards flavour) and everybody's palate is different; but to me the effect of baking soda is bizarrely reminiscent of how my mouth feels after vomiting. You know, sour flavour, teeth feeling stripped? Still gonna have to try some of these, though. I'm enjoying these "ultimate [fill in the blank] cake" threads. When do we get to genoises? Or have I missed that one already?

My student kit was composed entirely of the Victorinox Fibrox line; that's also what we use at my work. I really like these knives. My grip is impeccable even when the handles are slick with blood or grease, and the textured handles are large enough that I can handle them deftly even on a bad-arthritis day. They may not hold an edge quite as well as the more expensive knives out there, but the converse is also true. It takes no time at all (a few quick strokes of the steel, or the stone if you've neglected your blade) to bring it back to a brutally sharp edge. I've tried various higher-end knives from my classmates' kits (Henckel, Wusthof, Global, and the upper-end Victorinox knives) and didn't see any compellling reason to change. I'm thinking seriously of a Japanese-style knife for at home (want to teach my kids proper knife skills, and the smaller knife would be easier for them to handle), but I really prefer a longer blade for serious work. That Sanelli looks like a good choice, for my home knife. Gonna have to see who carries them locally.

Salmonella is carried on the outside of the eggshells, having been acquired from the hen's innards. If I am going to prepare a mayonnaise (or anything else using raw eggs) I give them a good scrubbing with a green 3M scrub pad, some hot water, and the antibacterial dish soap I use. Any sanitizer would do the job, for that matter. And of course, once the eggs are in the water, wash your hands, too... My sister is so paranoid about mayonnaise that she won't even use it in her son's school lunches. I should e-mail her some links to recent studies showing that commercial mayonnaise is so acidic that it *kills* salmonella bacteria injected directly by the researchers!

I worked eight hours today at my day job, then six at my night job. I took ten minutes' break around 2PM (I'm supposed to take 30, but I just don't have the patience); then I had a nice 40 minutes or so on a crowded rush-hour bus going between jobs. At my night job we all sit down to eat after service, but (again) I don't have the patience to really linger over my food. I just want to clean up and get home. So I don't get a whole lot of "sit time" there, either. Not that it's unavailable, for me. I'm just congenitally incapable of sitting down while I'm at work. At home, now, it's another story...

Word. When I had my little mid-life meltdown a couple of years ago, I came back to one bottom-line notion. I knew it would be crazy hard work; I knew that (graduating at 40) I might not be able to handle it physically in the long term; I knew that it would be a long time (if ever) before I made any kind of reasonable money at it. But at the end of the day, I'm doing something I enjoy for its own sake. That counts for a lot.

I just graduated from cooking school, Milena, with one year in Nova Scotia and one year in Alberta. In both of my schools, the split was very nearly 50/50 in gender. Granted, there are many more men than women in the profession presently, but it is beginning to change. One evening after a competition, a female from a small-town campus of the NSCC told us of her difficult apprenticeship, . The chef she was apprenticing under told her flatly that he'd been told to hire her, because his superiors wanted to have a woman in the kitchen. He then went on to tell her that she would never make it in the business, and that he was going to personally see to it that he drove her out, because it would be a kindness to her in the long run. When he retired, five years later, she got his job as the exec. On his recommendation. For at least one more generation, it will probably continue to be tougher for a woman to make it. But things are changing, and will continue to change. Hang tough, and keep on plugging. And as often as necessary, come here to vent or learn.

panch phoron amchoor carom seeds white poppy seeds Poha Bhel Puri Mix Coconut Flakes (unsweetened) asafoetida I'll have accumulated most of those before summer's over. I was at the little Punjabi store near my sister-in-law's house yesterday, but I only replenished my stock of coriander seed and picked a squeeze tube of mehendi for my daughter's birthday party (next weekend, all the guests will get a "tattoo"). Now I just need some time to enjoy it all. <sigh>

I've had this one from the library and found it very informative.

Some things are universal, apparently. My grandfather in Newfoundland was a deeply opinionated man. One of his quirks was that he had nothing but scorn for those who drank alcohol. His house, though, was never without a bottle of brandy for medicinal purposes; specifically for those occasions when he had a "bad head" (headache). For 50 years or so, he had a "bad head" quite reliably every Friday evening.

In Canada the Loblaw's chain (Superstore) sells tinned Devon cream. I've never had it, so I can't offer an opinion on it. Then again, I've never had Devon cream from anywhere else, so why the heck should anyone care about my opinion?

Damn it, I should know not to come in here at night. I've just been catching up on the forum here and had to put everything down to go and make potatoes with cumin. I don't know why it is, but cumin has a curiously powerful effect on me. It's certainly not a childhood memory, because in the time and place I grew up even things like broccoli and zucchini were exotic "ethnic" items. Whatever the cause, the smell of cumin seeds toasting in my cast-iron skillet gives me an intense feeling of well-being, just like the smell of bread fresh from the oven. It's surely not part of my ethnic heritage, but cumin is certainly part of my personal "comfort food" heaven.

I think I've got about 3/4 of the items on Suvir's list, and a few others besides. I've mostly accumulated them one at a time; initially to meet the needs of a specific dish I wanted to try, and then later just to have them on hand to expand my "range", so to speak. My two most recent additions are nigella seed (kalonji) and curry leaves.

What an interesting thread! In my gastronomy class, just a few short weeks ago, we'd covered the longtime association between zin and primitivo; and the instructor had mentioned that there was some doubt as to whether primitivo was in fact the "original zin" (pace Bonnie Doon). I'll have to forward him the links to some of these articles. To make it more interesting, I'd bought a bottle of plavac mali just a few weeks ago from my local bottle shop. It was a 1997 "Kastelet", and cost me all of $9 CDN to try...I've been hearing that some of those eastern European wines are great bargains, so I picked one at random. It was a little bit strange on my palate, as I've not had any real exposure to zin, but it was quite an acceptable table wine in my admittedly non-expert opinion.

Ummm...I don't really have a recipe as such. Par-cook your rhubarb (I just nuked mine for about 4-5 minutes), cool, place in unbaked pie shell, sprinkle with sugar ('till it be enough) and cover with pastry cream. Bake it at 375F or thereabouts, until the crust is baked and the top of the cream is just nicely golden. You may want to partially prebake your pie shell. I didn't, because my oven in that particular house heated primarily from the bottom; so my piecrusts always baked through very quickly. I'm sorry that's so vague, but before I went to cooking school I didn't really pay much heed to recipes.

Not surprising, I guess. There's been a lot of back-and-forth between New England and the Atlantic Provinces over the years. A lot of our regional specialties are similar.

I'd just like to throw out a comment about the keeping qualities of organic vs. non-organic produce. Last year, when I lived in Nova Scotia, I worked for a company which was pioneering the "box delivery" business model in Halifax. We bought our produce locally to the greatest extent possible, then (as our all-too-short season ended) went to Ontario, and British Columbia, and eventually the US and points south. My observation was that the locally-grown product held up better in my refrigerator than non-organic (and non-local) supermarket items; imagine my surprise at finding a three-week old head of overlooked romaine to be still in usable condition! Unfortunately the "imported" organics did not fare so well, I had to use them more quickly than the supermarket product. Of course, the notion that buying local produce is better is hardly a news flash...

Back in Nova Scotia, it's common to use a beaten egg with a bit of sugar in it to bind up the excess juice. I've taken that a step further and used pastry cream with the rhubarb, and rather liked the combination. Then my wife and kids, looking to extend the whole tart-rhubarb/sweet-filling theme, suggested a rhubarb pie with butter tart filling poured over. That's been their biggest favourite so far, though personally I prefer the pastry cream version. Either way, the rhubarb needs to be partially pre-cooked and cooled before going into the shell.

Me, too...but I don't go overboard with it.... <ducks and runs>

Depending on how rich your stock was to begin with, you'll probably be okay reducing it to 1/12 or 1/16 (1/12 if good, rich stock; 1/16 if just average). Starting with a remi ("remouillage", or re-boiling, is the second stock made from a given set of bones; it tends to be lighter and thinner), you might even go a bit more than that. As McDuff says, your mouth should tell you when your glace is done. It should have a nice, rich mouthfeel and lots of flavour; it should coat the back of a spoon nicely. In your mouth, though, it should not be thick and sticky like library paste. Although very rich and viscous, it should dissolve readily in your mouth. A tablespoon of glace, then, should be the equivalent of roughly 16 tablespoons of good stock; which would be all the flavour of 200ml of stock in concentrated form. Glace is great for making quick sauces a la minute; deglaze your pan with some wine, cook out the alcohol, stir in a spoonful of glace, finish it with a little butter and some aromatics, and you're there! Of course, like consomme, the quality of your glace depends entirely on the quality of your stock. If your stock is bland, your glace will be relatively inocuous as well.

Awwww, geez, guys... Just want you to know I feel your pain. Gets me right...here!