ellencho

In the latest new episode of Good Eats, Alton Brown made a split pea burger. (for anyone who's into that sorta thing)

Lately I've been listening to audio books while cooking. I don't have time to fast forward through the songs I don't like on my CDs and I don't like listening to commercials on radio stations.

Maybe not necessarily a foody but perhaps a fatty? My mom has told me about two separate occasions of me refusing to eat certain items at friends' homes because they didn't have any whipped cream to accompany the jell-o or their strawberries.

I had a similar problem myself. I solved it by not allowing my loaves to overproof and by doing the envelope folding method every hour during the fermentation.

← Thanks for the explanation GG. I don't recall using any water in my saute/sweat, but I did double dip my wooden spoon in stirring my spinach/onion mix as well as the onion/garlic mix. Perhaps there was some copper in my frozen spinach? Hmm, but now that I think about it, onion contains sulfur compounds too but perhaps they are different from the ones found in garlic.

So tonight I did some prep work for some meatballs I was planning to cook tomorrow. Since I made a spinach frittata for dinner tonight, I figured I might as well kill two birds with one stone and sweat out a large batch of onions and garlic with olive oil and a bit of salt. After I removed a couple spoonfuls of onion/garlic mix for my frittatta, I left the remaining onion/garlic in the pan a non-stick T-fal one to cool down for a bit before I stowed it away in the fridge. So two hours later I come back to this - regular colored onions, but green tinted garlic. Has this ever happened to anyone else? If I serve this tomorrow will I poison my bf and myself?

Firstly, these photos are phenomenal. I think it's important to live life to the fullest, including eating and drinking well when possible. Also, gotta love the meatball theme last night, you've completely inspired me for Sunday' night's dinner. I'm thinking about stealing slkinsey's idea, and doing the mozz filled meatballs, which leads me to my question: What type of mozz did you use for your meatballs? Fresh mozz or the dryer supermarket hunks that you find in the dairy section. I have fresh, and I'm abit afraid it'll be too moist and leak and ooze through the meatball as it cooks. What do you think?

I think I completely misread Pan's original post. He asked about aiding in digestion, but I took it as in aiding in digestion in people who had indigestion, something like heartburn/acid reflux. And I wasn't sure if taking bromelain/papain supplements would necessarily work like an acid reflux medication. But I see where jsolomon and ludja are going with their posts now. My bad. Carry on

I can't believe I missed this thread, I've got a degree in biochemistr and one in biology and I currently work in biochemistry. To answer Pan's question and to follow up on jsolomon's response, I believe bromelain and papain (enzymes from pineapple and papaya respectively) sort of pre-digest your food for you if you keep your meat in some sort of marinade containing either of those two fruits. Bromelains and papains are proteases, meaning that they can break down proteins, which is why if you marinate meat in either of those two fruits for long enough, it'll turn your meat into mush. I don't believe however, that papains or bromelains actually settle one's stomach, their job is just to break down proteins, but perhaps using them to get a head start on digesting proteins might be good for someone who might have trouble digesting proteins. It's similar to how ptyalin (a type of amylase), which is present in saliva digests starches into simpler sugars before they get to your stomach for further digestion. Amylase also is present in fruit, which breaks down starches and turns them into simpler sugars which makes riper fruits taste sweeter. And to add onto jsolomon's point, in terms of settling one's stomach, I suppose the indigestion one might feel from eating a lot of meat might come from your stomach producing extra stomach acid to compensate for the rise in pH that occurs when there's too much food in your stomach. I don't think that the consumption of papain or bromelains will settle one's stomach if you've got indigestion. In order to settle one's stomach you'd have to re-establish some sort of stomach acid equilibrium.

I remember reading an issue of MArtha Stewart a while back, and they recommended loading your silverware both pointy tips up and down. The reasoning behind this was so that there was less "nesting" of utensils so everything would be washed evenly. And if you're worried about contaminating the tines or head of your utensils washing your hands beforehand would solve that problem wouldn't it?

I hide the last piece of pastry on a low shelf. Usually the last napoleon, last cannele, last slice of cake. The psychology of that is that people tend to look for things at eye-level first, so I make the eye-level of my hidden food a lot lower than eye-level for most people.

for the meat I use kalbi sauce is ssam dwenjang for the lettuce I use red leaf no extra veggies

Me personally, yes I would disclose any out of the ordinary ingredients to my guests or loved ones because I would hope they would do the same for me. My mother KNOWS that I have a mango allergy but would still put mango into some of her dishes because she thinks that if it's just a small amount, or if it's cooked, or if I don't know about it then I'll be ok. Nevertheless, I am very careful to check the trash for any traces of mango peels and seeds when she cooks for me because I don't want to end up beet red and itching like a flea bitten dog. Also, you never know what sort of connection somebody has to a certain type of animal, so out of respect for that I would disclose any sort of unusual animal to my diners. Even something as mundane as squid or crawfish I'd let my guests know beforehand. I try not to invite overly picky eaters over very often because sometimes trying to coordinate their likes and dislikes around what I wish to serve can get irritating and I end up feeling really frustrated.

Duck, nearly any form of it. But I have been known to nibble on a piece of crisp duck skin every now and then. Lamb has sort of a weird goat-cheese taste to it. Not surprisingly, I don't like goat cheese either.

A perfectly aged, perfectly roasted rib roast. Like this one. And a still steaming but crisp croissant. Sorry no picture of that

So this was attempt #3 with his basic sourdough recipe. The first time I attempted it I completely overproofed it until it was pretty much liquid. The second time I overproofed it, but by not quite as much. As they say, third time's the charm. I used the prepackaged powdered starter sold by Goldrush which I've heard isn't exactly the best but hey, that's what I had so I used it. I made my own slight change to the directions and I did the envelope folding technique twice during its second ferment and after 3 hours I shaped it and stuck it in the fridge overnight. I think I'm getting a bit better at slashing now. I used a brand new razor blade and tried my best to go in almost horizontally to the bread. I think I need to work on getting deeper cuts though. This is the crumb. It was surprisingly moist and had a nice amount of chew.

Well you can send them to me or make a chocolate pudding. Martha Stewart, incidentally has an excellent chocolate pudding recipe and I've substituted milk chocolate for semisweet and it was delicious and rich.

Gale Gand has an excellent recipe over at the Food Network site.

Can anyone help? I attempted the basic sourdough, and while I had excellent SD flavor, I overproofed apparently and ended up with an ugly brown disk with a dense crumb with absolutely no oven spring. I was going to bake right after proofing but ran out of time, so after 1.5 hrs of proofing at room temp (71 degrees F) I stuck it in the fridge to retard overnight. Did my proofing out at room temp plus the overnight fridge retarding cause my SD failure? And for when I attempt this next weekend, do you have any tips or tricks for knowing when my dough has proofed enough?

Actually I have no clue SS, they were store-bought and yellow but I'm not sure what the source of the color is and unfortunately I'll never know because I threw out the wrapper.

So I finally made my siu mai. They turned out pretty good, I used the 1:1 pork/shrimp ratio that everyone else used in this cook-off. This is my filling. 1 lb pork, 1 lb shrimp, 1 egg, 1 pack of shiitakes diced, 1 Tb sesame oil, 1Tb soy sauce, 1 Tb rice wine vinegar - doesn't get much easier does it? Here's my finished product. I thought they turned out pretty decent. The flavor was good. I think I lost a bit of moisture by using a less fatty portion of shoulder so I made myself a little dipping sauce from the same wet ingredients used to season the filling, as well as a good amount of sriracha.

I visited for the my first time ever and great googly moogly is this place good. I had the crimson table grapes gelato and the pineapple. I tried the cherimoya and it was outstanding, but I didn't end up getting a scoop of it because I wanted a more tart and sharp treat rather than something creamy like the cherimoya.

I do make my own, but it's using someone else's recipe with my own modifications. I adapted my recipe from shiokadelcious! . The changes I made were using half the white sugar, and using five spice powder as my seasoning instead of using garlic and ginger. Everything else is the same as her recipe and technique.

Char siu and gai lan served with white rice.

Argh, I can't remember the name of the movie, but I think it might be Farewell My Concubine, and that little boy chokes to death from greedily eating his Bing Tang Hu Lou too fast.