chromedome

A couple of afterthoughts (or more accurately, things I'd have put in the first post if I could just master the whole notion of thinking more before I hit "Add Reply"): First, thank you Chef Laiskonis for the link to the older thread. I'm new here, and ploughing through the archive will take me months...great discussion! Shame the event didn't come off. And Cbarre, there is a strong tradition in the Middle East and India of using rice and legume flours in sweet dishes. I recently made shortbread-ish cookies using rice flour and chickpea flour (two kinds, not combined in the one) for a course in International Cuisine. Both were from Najmieh Batmanlij's Iranian cookbooks.

Lots of interesting notions are out there, for sure... I've used squashes and sweet potatoes in many desserts, and certainly a creme brulee sort of thing is a good option. Or use the cooked puree in a stirred custard with citrus. One of the instructors at my school had a tart on the menu with sweet potato grated raw, then combined with chopped nuts and warm spices and tossed with sugar syrup. This was baked in a standard short dough, in an 11" tart pan. It was pretty good, though I wasn't quite happy with the spices. I plan to work on that one in the fall, when sweet potatoes are cheap again. Animal fats? Edna Staebler ("Food that really Schmecks") insists that rendered chicken fat makes the best cookies...it's a texture thing. Perhaps that could be adapted to other desserts? I've been toying with the idea of smoking half-dried pear halves for a dessert...thinking of a fresh cheese and a middlin' sweet sauce, maybe even maple or birch syrup. Still hypothetical until I borrow a smoker from the in-laws. I've just recently added fenugreek seeds to my pantry, and I'm intrigued by the notion of using the toasted seeds (ground) in cookies or pastries. They have that interesting earthiness to them, but also a note of toasted butterscotch. I suppose I should schlep over to the Indian food forum and ask if there's a tradition of using them in sweets. One afterthought...the Acadians, in my native Nova Scotia, had a traditional dessert involving salt pork. Fry slices of salt port until crisp. Place sliced apples and a piece of pork on a square of pie crust. Fold the corners up to surround (but NOT enclose) the filling; it is necessary that there be a bit of a lip all the way around the pastry. Bake in a hot oven. At about the halfway point, remove the sheet from the oven and drizzle hot maple syrup down the the opening in the top of the pastry. Return to the oven and finish baking. When you take the pastries from the oven, drizzle them again with maple syrup, this time allowing some to run over the outside of the pastry. Cool at least halfway before serving, if you have sufficient willpower. There was a recipe for this on the Slow Food website, but it seems to be gone now. Pity.

Souffles....doh! <insert sound effect of blistered hand sharply striking bald forehead> Will probably attempt macarons sometime in the near future...Feb 16 is a holiday here in Alberta, so perhaps over the long weekend. Cocktails, well...I just can't get up for mixed drinks at the best of times. I'm something of a zealot for drinking my spirits neat (if it's not worth drinking neat, it's not worth drinking mixed either...and if it IS worth drinking neat, why adulterate it?). For tonight, after I take my bread out, I'll probably throw some dacquoises together...I'm thinking I'll do something really rich with layers of chocolate genoise and chocolate mousse and the dacquoise and maybe a ganache glaze. I'll be working on Valentine's Day, so DW deserves something a little special by way of apology, no? (DW= De Wife)

The CIA course is heavily slanted to promoting California cheese, but tuning out advertising is second nature to me so I'd forgotten about that. The explanation of the process is very decent and the videos were interesting (to me, anyway) but the best part of the whole thing was the links at the end of each module. Here are a couple of them: A detailed article from a homesteading magazine Cheesenet

Speaking of Google, FFAR, have you seen this little goodie? It's a Google Hack by Tara Calishain, publisher of ResearchBuzz (a newsletter) and the recent book "Google Hacks." Cookin' With Google Limits your results somewhat, but by the same token saves you digging through a gazillion non-recipe hits.

I rather like most of the items listed (fruit, veg, offal, fish, shellfish, etc). Most of my real hatreds are reserved for various prepared foods. Leaving aside all of the evil things done to once-decent ingredients, though, the ones that more-or-less leave me cold would be 1) Cauliflower: All the downside of the cabbage family, none of the upside. 2) Avocadoes: A mouthful of lard, with a hint of clover. Or to hearken back to an earlier post in this thread, "margarine that grows on trees." Nothing really wrong with them except the seed isn't big enough...doesn't quite fill the skin. 3) Parsnips: I can choke them down if they're roasted, or concealed artfully in the rest of the dish, but there's something about them that triggers my gag reflex faster than a Celine Dion song. Couldn't explain it if I tried. There are a number of things (sushi, tofu) that I just don't care enough about to actively dislike. Remember Ugarte in Casablanca? "You despise me, don't you, Rick?" "If I thought about you, I probably would!"

The restaurant where I work generates large quantities of egg whites every week, which I am welcome to take home. I've made angel-food cakes in the standard and cocoa variations, and baked them in flat pans as well as tube pans (the better to make layer cakes with them). I've made cookie-sized meringues several times; also various takes on dacquoises. I've used them to make consomme as well, and fresh pasta. "Creative fatigue," however, is setting in. What are everyone's favourite things to do with egg whites? I have two litres in my freezer and four more in my fridge, and I'm running out of ideas. I hate to *not* bring them home (goes against my East-coast frugality gene) but boy, it's getting harder to find things to make with them. I'm open to sweet or savoury suggestions, even if they're variations on things I've already mentioned. After all, your version might be better than mine...and I won't be sick of them forever...

When I was young, and a bachelor, and frequently intoxicated, I made the Ultimate "Cholesterol Highball" Grilled Sandwich.... Fry half a pound of bacon. Drain the pourable fat from the pan. Butter two slices of bread; place them butter side down in the pan, fry until crisp. Remove from pan. Butter the uncooked sides. Place one in the pan, uncooked side down. Cover with as much cheese as will fit. Place the half-pound of bacon on top of the cheese. Cover the bacon with another great whack of cheese, then the second piece of bread. Fry on both sides until the outsides are crispy as well, and the cheese has melted. Although this recipe is peanut butter free, that's probably because I was just too ripped to think of it. This sandwich was normally consumed with the last beer left in the house, a large pickle (sometimes a large jar of pickles), and a chunk of smoked eel from the euro-deli across the way from where I lived. This is just one example of why I'm occasionally surprised that I made it to age 40.

It's part of the mallow family, same as marsh mallow; hence the mucilaginous quality. A friend of mine in another online community spent 30 years in Egypt as an archaeologist, and has accumulated many Egyptian recipes. I'll see if he has any suggestions to offer.

Semi-deboning (clearing out the cavity, but leaving the legs and wings intact) is decidedly the way to go. I'm sure I could bone out the limbs as well, if I really needed to, but I'd need to have a long walk and a stiff drink afterwards. I grabbed quail on impulse for an in-class cooking competition at school. The first one took me about fifteen minutes, the second eight, and the third (and ensuing) about four or five minutes each. I started by cutting out the backbone with a sharp knifetip (shears would be good, too). Then, opening the bird up, I broke the wishbone with my fingers and cut it out. Follow the wishbone down to the shoulder blades, and sever that at the joint where it joins the wing. Run the tip of your knife down either side of the keelbone, and pull it up with your fingers. Cut the breast meat away from it as you lift gently. If you have a thin, flexible boning knife, you can slide it beneath the ribs quite easily to cut them away; much like cutting away the ribs of a salmon side. After that it's just a matter of running a fingertip gingerly around the cavity to check for any missed bones; and then rolling the wee beastie back into shape around your filling of choice. This is probably not the canonical way to do it, but it works. As with any piece of delicate work, a sharp knife is *really* important. I prefer a flexible boning knife for delicate work, a shorter stiff one for heavier pieces. When you are sharpening a boning knife, pay special attention to the tip where the blade curves. This is your "fingertip", and with a delicate touch you'll feel the bones just as well with the knife as you do with your finger.

The CIA has a lovely little free course on their Pro Chef website: free registration, several lessons, videos, etc. I worked my way through the course during my (wry snicker) free time during culinary school. It's pretty good. Lemme dig up the URL... Geez, is it just me, or does this site get less usable by the month? Found it, eventually... Free Courses Click on the "California Cheese" course.

Well done, Neil! I'm in the midst of my <sigh> four weeks in pastry lab, part of my final semester of Culinary Arts. In fact, right now I'm nursing a handful of pretty good blisters from a momentary lapse of caution while prepping for some pulled sugar. We're required to do one centrepiece each of chocolate and sugar work (our choice; pulled/blown/gum paste/pastillage/marzipan/whatever). Although patisserie is a small part of our curriculum, we're fortunate in having a program head who wants us all to have a strong grasp of the basics. A lot of our graduates get employment at resort hotels in the nearby Rockies, and shortages of skilled hands are endemic, so the ability to jump in at the bakeshop and be productive immediately is a Very Good Thing. Although all of your work was impressive, I particularly appreciated the plated desserts. So often, those are way, waaayyyy too fussy...garnished from here to hell, and showing an obvious determination to put every technique the chef knows onto each plate. Yours were visually appealing and not overdone, obviously the product of good training and an innately gifted eye. Although I'm new here and a stranger to most of the community, I am impressed by your talent and will follow your career with interest.

Oh, and Tmnoland, you can get a good apricot glaze by going to your supermarket and buying a jar of apricot jam. Warm it slightly and push it through a sieve to remove larger lumps, then warm it over a double boiler with a little bit of water and brush it on with a pastry brush. Very traditional, very nice...

Seth: I use a KitchenAid stand mixer as well, and I find it to be rather maddening for bread dough. By trial and error, I've determined that anything more than a modest 600-700g batch of dough (about a pound and a half) tends to be more trouble than it's worth. In my case, the big frustration is that once the dough gets to a certain consistency it climbs the (pick an expletive) dough hook and gets wound around the head of the mixer. I have devised a number of methods for getting around this. One is to do large quantities of dough in small batches, and then combine them in a large bowl for fermentation. Another is to take the dough out of the mixer, hand-knead it to a certain texture (which, alas, I'd never be able to communicate verbally) and then return it to the mixer. A third is to make a lot of "rustic" breads with a rather wet dough, which is easier to mix and does not climb. Another technique, which does not cure the problem but which helps and is always useful, is to give the dough a twenty-minute rest (the "autolyse," if you're a boulanger) after about 2/3 of the flour has been added. Gluten strands don't form, of course, until the flour is hydrated; giving this rest time allows the gluten to form up without giving your arms (or your mixer) quite the same workout. After the resting period, you'll find that the dough comes to the correct consistency with much less work. McDuff, I found your comments about pastry-making quite interesting. After 20+ years as an avid home cook/baker, I am about to graduate from a reputable culinary school here in Canada. Although I've enjoyed baking for years, and have made things like brioches and puff pastry from scratch, I'm finding my time in the pastry lab (two weeks down, two to go) quite enlightening. There are just so many ways to combine the basic techniques into different products! Wrt apples, btw, have you ever tried one of those little hand-cranked jobbies that peel, core, and slice the apples all in the one go? My parents made 30+ apple pies per day at their homestyle bakery in Nova Scotia, and that thing was a godsend. The cheap ones will only last a few months, but the better ones will stay sharp for years (and are adjustable, so you don't lose half of your apple with the peel).

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to taste Alberta AAA beef side-by-side in a blind taste test with beef from New Zealand and Uraguay. The striploins were all grilled to about medium-rare, and seasoned lightly with just salt and pepper. The Alberta beef was certainly the best-marbled of the three, but since the other two were finished on grass rather than grain, this was unsurprising. About 2/3 of those in attendance chose the Alberta beef as the best-tasting, with the remainder about evenly divided. Personally, I found the NZ product to also have a very good flavour, though it was not as tender. The Uraguayan product was bland in comparison, though very comparable to the Alberta beef for tenderness. This is in no way a comprehensive tasting, but I offer it up for what it's worth. As for cattle from outside the province being sent here and then sold as "Alberta Beef", that is quite correct. Under the applicable laws, any beef cattle which are finished for 90 days at an Alberta feedlot may be sold as "Alberta Beef." The feeling is that it's the barley diet which creates the marbling and unique flavour which mark the product as distinctive; hence cattle from Saskatchewan (or Hawaii, or wherever) become "Alberta Beef" as a result of that feeding.

The Persians have a well-established system of hot and cold foods, as well, which arguably antedated and influenced the Greek (Galenic) system. Most likely, this was the rootstock of the Arab world's understanding of the system, as well. I saw quite a bit about it in various Persian cookbooks I was reviewing in November for my International Cuisine class. I'll try to dig up some of those references for you over the next week or so. If any of you have one of Najmieh Batmanlij's cookbooks, check in the back...she usually has a chart or table of hot and cold foods.

Thank you for the welcome! Between working full-time, going to school full-time, studying, freelance research, parenting, and husbanding, I don't have a whole lot of free time...but I expect you'll be seeing a lot of me in several of the forums (fora?), especially those pertaining to Indian food. I've just found this site within the last few days, and have only begun to scratch the surface of what's here. As a student at a formal (and well-regarded) culinary program, though, I'm deeply impressed by the quality of information offered here at eGCI.

For North American participants in this forum, it is well scrutinizing the all-purpose flours available in your region. I live on the Canadian prairies, the very heartland of hard (high-gluten) wheat flours. The all-purpose flour I usually buy has a protein content of 12.5%, which is very much at the high end of the scale for all-purpose. In other regions, all-purpose flour can be in the 10.5% protein range, which is much less suitable for western breads but good for Indian breads. Of course, flours are not usually labelled with their gluten percentages. To calculate the percentage of protein, look at the nutritional information located on the side of many popular brands. This table will list the nutritional values of the flour based on a standard portion size; on my bag, for example, protein accounts for 4.4 grams of a 37 gram serving size. Simple math gives the percentage I'd quoted above. What I've been using in recent months is standard-issue Canadian whole-wheat flour with the larger flakes of bran sieved out; and cut half-and-half with all-purpose flour. I'd culled that idea from one or another cookbook (probably one of Madhur Jaffrey's) and it seems to work well. For anyone who hasn't made these breads before, I'll second the emphasis on observing the resting times for the doughs. Chapatti, puri, and paratha are all breads I make regularly at home; and when I've made them in a hurry (insufficient resting time) the texture is just not the same. I've found that a conventional oven can make reasonably good naan with a bit of help from a cast-iron skillet (an improvisation in my International Cuisine lab at school). Reasoning that heat from the walls of the tandoor was just as important as the hot air (conduction *and* convection), I preheated the skillet on the stovetop; patted the naan into the skillet; and then placed it in a very hot oven. It took some trial and error to find the best temperature for the skillet, but the bread was very satisfactory. This school is a great idea. I've been a dedicated home cook for 25 years or so, and I'm soon to graduate from a more conventional culinary arts program; but I love the free-wheeling atmosphere here! I'm looking forward to exploring more of these courses.