scott123

If I'm plating food, I try to serve it as hot as possible due to the flat, airy shape of the plate allowing for the food to cool quickly. If the food is in a well insulated bowl, though, I heat it until quite hot and then let it cool until edible. I do that with most of the foods I eat. Heat until too hot to eat, then let cool until edible. I find that the prolonged heating/cooling time allows the temperature to conduct more evenly throughout the food.

Hot hazelnuts combined with hot oil will blend to a silky smooth paste. If the nuts/oil aren't hot, though, a vortex won't form and they won't blend well.

I was disappointed with Bride & Prejudice. I am such a fan of Gurinder, Jane Austen and Bollywood that I did have astronomical expectations, though. FWIW, Of the movies mentioned here, What's Cooking? has the most food in it. I found the multicultural approaches to roast turkey especially endearing. I fell in love with her on the spot. If only she weren't married Although not as endearing and quite auntie-less, Robert Rodriguez does something similar in the DVD extras of "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" where he makes cochinita pibil. If you haven't seen it, it's worth a look.

I'd be curious to hear which temps you been using it at? Is it as stable at, say, 100f as say, 200f? Although you'd never use 200f for sous vide, I'm still curious if it's stable over a wide range of temperatures.

I too am not exactly sure what you're attempting to do. Are you talking about blending whey protein with water, i.e., making a water/whey protein shake and then using that with sweet chocolate to make ganache? Or are you talking about adding whey protein to the tradition cream? Whey protein has a bit of a cooked milk taste. It's really not terribly palatable, as has been previously mentioned. I've been working a bit with the other, less bioavailable milk protein casein. Casein tastes a lot better, but, like whey, has textural issues. I haven't gotten around to it yet, but I think blending the casein thoroughly with liquid should help break down the particle size a bit and help with texture. I'd venture to say blending the whey might help as well. Although casein is less bioavailable then whey, it's supposed to have some benefit to it- I think it relates to slower digestion or something like that. I'd try and sell your friend on using some casein along with the whey. I've been pondering which liquid to use to blend. Cold cream will whip and prevent the proteins from blending correctly. Hot or warm cream may stay liquid, I'm not sure.

Whole Foods carries great ciabatta bread. ← Although Whole Foods uses superior ingredients, almost all of the breads sold in the bakery department are par-baked, frozen and shipped from a regional wharehouse. A par-baked/frozen bread will never have the same taste/texture as a freshly baked bread. The deli department does sell wonderful panini's, though (sandwiches too). They don't buy their bread from the bakery dep't, though. They order it from Balthazar.

Hmmmm... how about carefully drilling two holes in the side of the crockpot, one near the bottom and one near the top of the waterline and inserting thermometers through those, anchored with silicone caulk? This would be for continuous monitoring, of course. You might be able to just get away with taking the temps of the top and bottom water with an instant read thermometer at different time intervals. This will tell you if there is any discrepancy. My guess is that there won't be. Here's my next question. Why don't they incorporate dimmers in home ovens? The on/off cycle on my oven gives me temperatures within a 50 degree range of the temperature I choose. It's ridiculous.

You can position the tips of two digital probe thermometers at different locations in the liquid. They're 20 bucks a piece, but you'll still be well below the couple of hundred dollar outlay mentioned previously. You can set them to trigger alarms- one a degree above your target setting, one a degree below. If you can get a crockpot to do even close to relatively precise sous vide, I would be very very impressed. I've been considering sous vide confit as well as sous vide hollandaise and maybe pudding, but I definitely don't have a couple hundred bucks to spare. If you can pull off an affordable alternative, I am so there! Oh, how about an aquarium water pump for circulating the water? I think those are in the 15 dollar range. Is a dimmer safe with a heating element? If you are eventually able to get this to work, are there dimmers that can be bought or made that could be broken down/marked with very tiny increments? For some reason I'm picturing one of the nobs from a sound board, except maybe even a longer distance for greater precision. My water bath goes up to 11.

In an air tight bag, I'd say paneer should last for up to 5 days. I wouldn't go too far past that, though.

It depends on the water content. Toffees are made with cream, butter and sugar and those last at room temperature indefinitely. This is because they contain almost no residual water. The looser the sauce, the shorter the shelf life. Even a high water content sauce will last for a very very long time though. A low water content sauce is good for years (think corn syrup) but a high water content sauce is still good for months. I'd say 3 months no problem. Sugar is a very powerful preservative. Is the sauce solid/unpourable at refrigeration temp? If so, I'd say 6 months easy, but probably much much longer than that.

If you've read any of the previous threads on this subject, you'll know that there is no one single approach to diabetic eating. Some eat low fat, some low carb, some sugar free, some a combination of these three, while some eat normally and medicate. There are a myriad number of approaches. If you guess wrong, you'll make a cake your friends won't be able to eat. If your friend is asking you the carbohydrate content, there's a good chance they watch all their carbs, not just the sugar carbs. If you give them a sugar free (or low sugar) cake made with wheat flour, this may not work for them. You may need to track down wheat flour alternatives such as soy flour, almond flour and/or vital wheat gluten. Talk to your friend and find out specifically what they can/cannot eat. If they eat sugar free, that's a lot easier than if they eat low carb. If they watch their fat intake, that complicates things as well, especially when you get into the icing. Banana, btw, is high in sugar. When it comes to blood sugar response, the body makes absolutely no differentiation between naturally occuring sugars and refined white sugar. Sugar is sugar.

Come and knock on our door... we've been waiting for you... That Jack lobster is so darn funny!

I use both 'gravy' and 'sauce' when refering to the liquid component of curries. Since gravy has such a strong association with meat/poultry (and flour) I would say sauce might be a better choice for vegetable curries.

It's a two pronged attack. First, you want to remove all sources of food by cleaning religiously and making sure everything is in air tight/impregnable containers. At the same time, you want to get those cardboard pieces that Ilene mentioned. Nothing else works as well. They're boric acid based, I believe, which makes them one of the least toxic solutions. Btw, they may not actually be ants. From the research that I've done, the super tiny ones might be aphids.

Skin has the highest proportion of collagen than any other part of the bird. If you look at the parts that have been recommended for well gelled stocks- feet and wings, it's not a coincidence that feet and wings have the greatest proportion of skin than any other part of the chicken. Skin, in whatever form, is stockmaking gold.

I've seen them at my Shop-Rite as well (I shop at the one in Wharton). They've always been in the Latin produce area. I'd try Twin Cities supermarket in Elizabeth. That's the only place I can get fresh bitter oranges year round.

This is the convention I use. As mono and di-saccharides fall under the heading 'sugar,' corn syrup, honey, and maple syrup, all mono and di-saccharide based, could be referred to as 'sugar solutions.' Anthony, hydrogenated sugars are not mono, di or tri-saccharides and thus don't fall under the term 'sugars.' Hydrolysis breaks the di-saccharides into mono-saccharides, a complex sugar into simple sugar. Hydrogenation adds a hydrogen atom. One more atom, different molecule, different animal, no longer a 'sugar.' Similar molecularly, yes, but definitely not classifiable as sugar. At least not within the mono, di, and tri saccharide naming convention. I'm making mono-, di-, and tri- saccharide free marshmallows.

You were working with the wrong -tols. Erythritol has the smallest size of all the -tols and, because of this, has the greatest freezing point depression capabilities. Polydextrose helps to keep the erythritol dissolved. That's all you need for great sugar free ice cream. If you would have had those two ingredients, it would have been a piece of cake. ←

You've got the wrong -tols. Erythritol has the smallest size of all the -tols and, because of this, has the greatest freezing point depression capabilities. Polydextrose helps to keep the erythritol dissolved. That's all you need for great sugar free ice cream. If you would have had those two ingredients, it would have been a piece of cake.

So you opted against experimenting with the polyd/erythritol? The Minicarb chips, btw, are polydextrose based, so those gave you a little bit of freezing point depression.

Cellulose ends in -ose Chemically a sugar? No... Once you modify the molecule, you're talking a difference substance. Pure polydextrose (no residual glucose) is as molecularly dissimilar to sugar as cellulose or starch.

Sugar free. Isomalt and erythritol are sugar alcohols and contain no sugar/sucrose. Polydextrose contains trace amounts of glucose, but the high percentage of polymerized sugar allows it to be counted as fiber and utilized in sugar free desserts.

Sugar free ingredients. Isomalt, erythritol, and polydextrose.

Care to share your recipe?

A cordless drill with a whisk 'bit?' Now that's thinking outside the box! Perhaps even a corded drill would do the trick. I know Alton Brown breaks out the drill for his huge pepper grinder.