beccaboo
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Posts posted by beccaboo
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I melted some plastic inside a pressure cooker, and got it off by warming the pot and scraping the plastic with a razor blade. That got it nearly all off, and I got the tiny residue with one if those green scrubby things.
It would be harder to do with the pastic on the outside of the pot, of course. Maybe you could set it upside down in a skillet and heat it that way? Or on a cookie sheet in the oven?
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I have a Magafesa and two Kuhn Rikons, and like them very well. I've seen the WMFs at the store and they look nice, but I've never heard anything about them.
Get the biggest one you have room for--you can only fill it 2/3 full, so you'll want a big one for stock.
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All we have out are the Kitchenaid mixer and the Vitamix blender on the counter (they're too tall to fit in the cupboard) and the microwave on top of the refrigerator. The rice cooker, food processor, immersion blender, Sumeet grinder thing, and tea kettle are in a cupboard, and everything else (waffle iron, crock pot, deep fryer, things we don't use much) is in the basement. We have hardly any cupboards and not much counter space.
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I make a Pennsylvania Dutch potato soup recipe that has something like a really low-fat roux. You rub a small amount (like a tablespoon) of fat into a lot (like 1/2 cup) of flour, then toast it on the stove. After it's browned, you whisk it into the rest of the soup. It tastes good and thickens well. You could try it in place of your normal roux and see how it works: I think the trick in this case is thoroughly rubbing in the fat first.
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I have all kinds of burn scars (I have one in progress right now from when the back of my left hand touched the broiler element), but I've never done anything too terrible with a knife. One time, though, I was peeling some kind of really hard winter squash with my new peeler and somehow my hand slipped and I peeled off half of my thumb knuckle! I had to go lie down for a while, so as not to faint, and then my mother the nurse made a nice dressing for my thumb so I could finish fixing dinner. We were having visiting-from-out-of-town relatives over, so I couldn't just bag dinner. The scar's not too bad now, but for a couple of years it looked kind of like a pink extra knuckle pasted onto my thumb.
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Use bread flour for a thick, chewy crust, and lower-gluten (cake or pastry) for a thin, crispy crust. And be sure your oven and baking stone are thoroughly preheated.
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So, what would, have you ever, used to stuff an onion?
Bread crumbs and sage, haggis.... That's all I can think of right now.
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I'm from California so I don't know much about baked beans except the aficianados I've encountered insist on Jacob's Cattle or Vermont Cranberry. The Jacobs Cattle have a new potato texture and will not fall apart but the VT Cran are dense and velvety and exude a superior liquid.
Soldier and yellow eye beans are good, too, but harder to find here in Seattle.
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Does anyone out there know why rucola is called "arugula" in North America?
This has bugged me for a long time. Why replace the Anglo "rocket" with what seems to be a made-up Italian word when the real one will do?
I've read that 'arugula' is 'rucola' in some Italian dialect, but haven't heard anything more specific than that. In Lombardy it's 'arigola.'
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I'm not sure a jelly made only with the peels will have much flavor. I remember reading a James Beard essay on apple jelly once but I'm pretty sure he used the whole fruit. I have added apple peels to other jellies and jams for the additional pectin before, so I'd certainly save some for that purpose.
The peels do have flavor--sometimes when I've made a pie or something and have lots of apple peels, I make myself apple peel tea by simmering them for five minutes or so, then adding a little sugar. Red apples of course, make more attractive tea (or jelly). I'd use the cores, too, for making jelly, as they also have pectin. Just take off the fuzzy blossom end stuff.
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That's a really unusual technique, Becca. I printed it out and might have to try it.
If you try the recipe as well as the baking technique, you should know that there's not nearly enough salt in it. When I make it again I plan to at least double the salt.
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The only time I've ever gotten bread with the thin, brittle crust I think you're after, I followed this recipe (it's a Word file). It breaks all the rules for nice crust (no steam, start in a cold oven), but the crust was just like those little Vietnamese baguettes!
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I don't think I've ever seen any other rice flour than mochiko - I'll have to look around. Tam, when Gabe used it, what brand was it, do you remember?
Asian grocery stores (the Viet Wah in Seattle is where I get my rice flour and tapioca flour) have lots of different rice flours. I just get the plain (not 'sweet' or 'glutinous') rice flour, and it works for most recipes. Mochiko's cheap there, too.
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1 C rice flour
1 C pastry or cake flour
2 t baking powder
2 C water
1 T yeast
1 T wheat malt syrup or 1.5 t sugar
1.5 t salt
4 C AP flour, approx.
You make it pretty much like normal bread--mix everything up, knead, let rise, divide into 8 pieces, rest, shape into mini-baguettes, rise, bake on baking stone with steam @ 425F for about 20 minutes.
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I haven't actually made these, but a reliable book (Home Baking by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid) has a recipe with 1 cup of rice flour, 1 cup of pastry flour, and 4 cups of all-purpose. There's some baking powder, too, in addition to the yeast, and a little bit of malt.
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Here's an egg substitute that works really well in cookies and things where the eggs funnction mainly as a binder:
Flax Gloop
Yield: a scant cup, about 5 eggs worth
Ingredients:
4 t flax seeds
1 C water
1. Let the seeds and water soak together in a little pan for at least an hour, or overnight.
2. Simmer for 20 minutes.
3. Let cool for a while, then pour everything into a cheesecloth-lined funnel and squeeze the gloop out into a jar.
4. About 3T gloop equals an egg.
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becaboo, what is the problem that you get?
is it the rise that is an issue? try kneading more, as it might be low in gluten.
I can't really remember--I just know that when I've used atta flour my breads don't come out as well as when I use $.99/lb "durum flour." The durum flour looks really different, too--it's a creamy color, while the atta flour I get is speckled with brown. I don't think they're the same thing.
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any place selling indian groceries should have 20LB bags for about 7$
Is that atta flour? It works well for chapatis and things, but not so well for yeasted Italian breads. At least not in my experience.
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I made the peach saffron this weekend, and it uses the 221 degree thing. I think it worked well, if anything it provided a set that's more than firm enough.
I think I wasted some saffron in the making of my peach jam. Saffron mostly provides color, and I thought the yellow peaches were better than the white ones this week, so I went with yellow. I contemplated just dropping the saffron, but then I thought it might still add something. But in the end, I think it didn't alter either the color or the flavor very much. Still a tasty jam, lovely to behold.
I just made the saffron peach and, with your experience in mind, used about 20 threads of saffron instead of just 15. It's still subtle, but you can taste the saffron--sort of a pleasantly musty flavor that you might not realise is saffron unless you already know. Maybe Ferber uses fancy Kashmiri saffron instead of the cheap Spanish stuff I have?
I think her spicing tends to be overly-mild--last year I made the peach and raspberry jam with cardamom, and you couldn't taste the cardomom at all. And I used nice, freshly ground cardamom!
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King Arthur already include this and diastatic malt in their bread flour.
I'm in full darkness in regards to the diastatic malt sources. I live outside of North America, so King Arthur is not available to me.
Does anyone know where possibly can I find it? Otherwise, is there any other product that contain the right enzymes, and could replace the malt in that respect?
I've heard that you can get it in shops with beer-making supplies, though you have to be careful to not get the stuff that's mixed with hops. Do you have home-brew shops in Tel Aviv?
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Nectarines are quite different in taste. I'm sure your jam will taste good, but it won't taste like jam made from peche de vignes.
I figured it wouldn't be the same, but I wondered. She has so many recipes calling for vineyard peaches, it's too bad they only exist in France. They sound good.
My jam turned out well though a little over-seedy. Every year I pick blackberries from the same bushes, and sometimes they have huge, crunchy seeds while other years they're barely discernible.
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Does anyone know what 'vineyard peaches'--called for in many of Christine Ferber's recipes--are? I just made some peach and blackberry jam using nectarines instead of vineyard peaches, and I am wondering how much my jam will differ from Ferber's.
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I cut it into fingers, marinate it for a while in something that'll go with the rest of dinner, then fry till crispy. I also use it in place of the meat for 'spag no-bol' (my daughter's favorite spaghetti).
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My oven, with its digital controls, has 170F as the default temperature for "warming." I usually keep things at 145F, though (that's the lowest it'll go), and it works pretty well.
mixer v mixer
in Kitchen Consumer
Posted
I've had my blue KSM90 300W Kitchenaid mixer, made by Whirlpool, for almost 15 years. It has always worked really well for me--no problems at all. This summer I bought a beige K45SS 250W mixer, made by Hobart, at a yard sale, intending to give it to an under-equipped baking friend for Xmas. Shortly afterwards, when we redid the kitchen, I realised that the beige mixer looked a lot nicer with our new color scheme. I've been using it ever since too see how I like it, and now I have to decide which to keep and which to give away.
As I said, I've had no problems at all with the blue one. The only flaws I've perceived in the beige one are:
--Its slowest speed is too fast, so it throws flour out when starting out. I can work around that, but it's kind of a nuisance.
--The little screw to adjust the beater height seems to be loose--I'm always having to adjust it (like every three weeks, not really always), and I never do with the blue one.
What do you all think?